


I've Fallen Out Of Favor (I've Fallen From Grace)

by alienor_woods



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Angst, Bisexual Clarke Griffin, Hurt/Comfort, Self-Discovery, Slow Burn, Soul-Searching
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-28
Updated: 2015-04-11
Packaged: 2018-03-15 13:55:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 27,110
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3449618
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alienor_woods/pseuds/alienor_woods
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“So that’s it. You led an army to Mount Weather for our friends and now you’re just gonna sit back let the Council decide everything else without even hearing what they want to do?”</p><p>"I'm done deciding who lives and who dies."</p><p>[Speculative post-S2 finale fic; Canon compliant through "Bodyguard of Lies."]</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I came up with the idea for this fic after "Resurrection," meaning for it to be a one-shot. It quickly grew and grew until I looked at how much I'd already written and how much was left on my outline and decided to chop it into three to four chapters.
> 
> Title from "Falling" by Florence + the Machine
> 
> Enjoy! (And cry, because #ze angzt.)

* * *

 

It had all seemed so simple, before. _Save our people_ – that was the goal. Clarke had known that it wasn’t going to be easy but she never thought that saving them was going to be _dirty_.

 

Mount Weather was defeated, sure enough, and their people saved, but the survivors had stumbled out into the open air and back to camp in a train of bloodied, bruised, and broken souls. And the path that had led there? The calls they’d had to make?

 

Clarke’s heart stutters, her stomach churns, and she has to turn away from the Grounder on the table in front of her to blink away the stinging in her eyes.

 

“Clarke, honey?” her mother asks. “What’s the matter?”

 

With a shake of her head, Clarke turns back and makes sure that she hasn’t inadvertently decreased her pressure on the as-of-yet untreated stab wound. Abby is working on a bullet wound in the man’s thigh, but she’s stilled her hands so she can run her eyes over Clarke’s face and body. Clarke recognizes her mother’s Doctor Expression better than just about anyone. “Just a bit lightheaded. I don’t think I had lunch,” Clarke lies. She clears her throat and jerks her chin downward, diverting her mother’s attention to the slice under the linen pad in Clarke’s palm. “I can get started on this one; the blood seems to have slowed.”

 

Abby nods and gestures at the tray of needles and hemostats by the grounder’s head. Abby’s face is clean, her hair and clothes tidy. It’s the type of cleanliness that comes from days on end of clean clothes and adequate shelter. Clarke has washed her face and neck, scrubbed her hands and arms since coming from Mount Weather, but the dank smell of its tunnels seems to have seeped into the deepest layers of her skin, alongside the choking smoke of ton DC, the stickiness of Finn’s blood, the powdered ash of the incinerated Grounders at the drop ship.

 

Clarke threads a needle and tries to remind herself that, this time, that there’s blood on her hands is _good_.

 

* * *

 

Three Grounder tribes leave the outskirts of Camp Jaha under the cover of darkness not even two days after the return from Mount Weather. Clarke sips on her thin breakfast porridge by the ever-burning bonfire in the center of the clearing and watches grounder emissaries hurry from tent to tent outside the Camp’s electric fence. She thinks about Lexa, how livid and scared she must be to see her living legacy crumbling right on the heels of what should have been her greatest victory.

 

A group of grounder guards start to argue outside the tent of the River Clan’s leader. Clarke hears a shout, then the sound of skin pounding into skin, then the metallic _shing_ of weapons being drawn and more shouts of encouragement and dissuasion.

 

Clarke isn’t hungry anymore. She rinses her half-full bowl and spoon, and heads back into the Ark to start her rounds.

 

Abby calls an emergency Ark Council meeting; Raven rushes to medical on the _click-clack-pound_ of her brace and cane to bring Clarke her mother’s message.

 

She doesn’t go. The only arguments she can stomach at this point are with the patients themselves over their _own_ pain; the only decisions she can make without bile rising in the back of her throat are whether wounds should be stitched closed or left open to heal.

 

There are shelves lying about, still overturned and off-kilter from the crash. With Jackson’s help, Clarke hauls them to the back corner of medical and pushes them up against the wall. She’s trying to create a filing system with the meager supplies she’s found over the past few hours when Bellamy storms through the still-jammed-open door. “Where the hell were you?” he demands, cheeks flushed from a combination of anger and exertion.

 

“Be quiet, Bellamy.” She shoves a few raggedy folders at the end of the row she’s working on and jerks her head to where a few patients slept fitfully through their recovery.

 

He huffs and sets his hands on his hips, but when he speaks again, his voice is much lower. “The Council meeting, Clarke. Did Raven forget to—“

 

She cuts him off with a shake of her head, because Raven _did_ do her job. “No, she told me.”

 

“Then where were you?”

 

Impatiently, Clarke throws out her arm and gestures at the open room filled with patients on makeshift beds. It’s been mere days since they sacked the mountain; the wounded and slowly-dying still pack the wide room from wall to wall. “Here! Where I should be!”

 

Bellamy glances to where she points and dismissively shakes his head. “None of this will matter if we go to war again.”

 

She raises a brow at him. “Yeah, and when they send another wave of biological warfare I’ll bet you’ll change your mind. Unless you _liked_ vomiting blood the last time.” The last folder goes in between “Johnson” and “Kim,” so she tucks her hair behind her ears and swings her heavy backpack up onto her shoulder.

 

Bellamy’s looking at her with a mixture of confusion and _disappointment_ and it’s the latter that she nearly cracks under. “So that’s it. You led an army to Mount Weather for our friends and now you’re just gonna sit back let the Council decide everything else without even _hearing_ what they want to do?”

 

“I said that I wasn’t going to stop until they were safe, and I didn’t—they’re safe, now.” Clarke shrugs, spreads her hands wide and lets them fall to her thighs with a slap. “My mom holds the Guard, Kane and Lexa are of the same mind. And you’re the one that went back into Mount Weather and kept them safe while I…” she gives a little shake of her head. At the hitch in her voice, his expression shifts, his face becomes open and caring again, and she has to look from him before her vision starts blurring again. “You’re the one who should be going to Council meetings now, Bellamy. I should stick to patching up the sick and the wounded.”

 

They stand in silence for a moment, Bellamy staring at Clarke with a furrowed brow and Clarke staring back with a determined and clenched jaw. Finally, Bellamy gestures at the pack on her shoulder. “What’s that?”

 

She hooks her thumb around strap. “My stuff. I asked for my own tent and Josephine said it would be finished by today.”

 

“I thought you might stay with your mom.”

 

Sometimes, she can’t look at her mother without wanting to curl up in a corner. Sometimes, she thinks the feeling is mutual. “It’s not a good idea to share a room with the Chancellor now that I’m not on the Council. Anyway, I want to be by myself.”

 

He stands his ground when she strides past him, accidentally bumping his elbow, and she feels his eyes boring into the back of her head as she goes.

 

* * *

Bellamy shoves his hands into his pockets and weaves his way through the maze of tents and shacks at the western edge of Camp Jaha.

 

Just when he thinks he understands Clarke, she pulls something out of the blue like this. _She_ had been the one to forge the alliance with the grounders, _she_ had been the one to send him off to Mount Weather, _she_ had been the one who had circumvented every adverse Council decision to get their friends back. He’d only gone to the Council meeting today to back her up, after all, and instead had found himself alone, arguing against Abby’s suggestion to simply break the alliance with the grounders, strengthen the voltage of their electric fence, and order engineering and mechanical to make more bullets. No matter how differently the grounders view vengeance and violence, no matter how “uncivilized” they seem, Bellamy knows the Ark couldn’t survive another war—not now, at least.

 

Jesus, when had _he_ become the politician?

 

His and Octavia’s tent sits on the left side of the dirt path, next to Jasper and Monty’s on one side and Fox and Harper’s on the other. It’s a dome of dirty white and blue plastic sheeting, with a scrap of red fabric for the door that Octavia snatched from somewhere because she didn’t like the feel of the plastic edge on her palm. She’s with Lincoln and Indra for now, and Bellamy doesn’t want to think about who she might choose when its time for Indra’s tribe to leave them, too.

 

The air inside the tent is only slightly warmer than the outside, and that’s half the reason Bellamy thinks his bed of blankets and deerskins looks extra alluring. He doesn’t have to be anywhere until dinnertime, so he drops down on the edge of it and toes off his boots.

 

The shifting weight of the bed wakes Echo. She rolls over onto her back, brown hair slipping over her bare shoulders, and blinks up at him with a twist of a smile. “Hi,” she murmurs, cups the back of his neck when he leans down for a kiss. “You’re cold. Where have you been?”

 

He considers venting to her. Warm and naked, with her face scrubbed clean of the kohl that had lingered around her eyes in her cage in Mount Weather, he almost forgets that she’s a grounder. But she is, and Bellamy doesn’t much want to talk, anyway. “Out,” he says instead, and kisses his way down to the pulse in her neck.

 

She strode into his tent like she belonged there on their first night back, swathed in a too-large tunic and loose leggings, fisted his hair and straddled his lap, and laughed when he asked, _why?_

 

 _Because I want to_ , she replied, and wrapped her legs around his waist like a vice when he flipped her onto her back.

 

And that’s what they do—they fuck and they eat and they sleep, and she does all three voraciously, like she’ll never get enough. He has no idea how long she’d been in Mount Weather, so he never comments on it. Besides, he’s not had a bedmate since the drop ship first landed, and having Echo pressed warm and tight against his side while the wind howls outside reminds him of how much he’d missed it.

 

* * *

 

 

The Ark Council meets almost daily now. He volunteers to go with the Guard to visit the civilian survivors within Mount Weather, still locked on Levels 6 and 7 because of radiation contamination. Clarke comes with them, since the Mountain is short on medical staff after the death of Dr. Tsing and several of her associates. It’s the first he’s seen her up close since their argument in medical several days ago and he notices the dark circles under her eyes. Bellamy asks if she’s getting enough rest, if Abby should rearrange some shifts, but Clarke shakes her head and says that it’s the wind that keeps her up at night, and they’re tight enough with the scheduling as it is. She’s lying, he knows she is, but she brushes off his questions and picks up the pace, claiming she doesn’t want rush through her examinations because they’d dragged their heels on their way in.

 

The radiation burns are healing nicely enough, as are the broken bones and bullet holes. Clarke breezes through the patients without problem and comes along with Bellamy to Maya’s apartment to say hello on their way out. Bellamy sees the Lovejoy kid napping on her couch and his throat seizes shut.

 

“I told dad we needed to take him in, because of what we did,” Maya says quietly. “His mom…she died a while back.”

 

Clarke is confused. “Who is he?”

 

Maya’s too guilty and sweet to say the words, so Bellamy clears his throat and owns up to it. “We killed his father. To get out of the pit.”

 

Clarke’s mouth makes a little _o_ of understanding. Through his jacket, he feels her fingers slip up his arm and squeeze his elbow. “I’m sorry,” she says, her eyebrows pulling together as she looks up at him.

 

Bellamy shrugs. “What do you have to apologize for? I’m the one that strangled him.”

 

“It had to be done,” Maya argues in his defense, but it doesn’t make him feel any better about the kid curled up on the couch. Still, Clarke’s fingers drop to the curve of his palm and stay there all the way back to the surface.

 

He’s restless that night, unable to drift off into sleep. His shifting keeps Echo awake, much to her annoyance, so Bellamy placates her with a second round of fucking, palm pressed over her mouth to keep her from waking their neighbors. He brings her off with his fingers before hiking her knee up high and pushing in deep, but he feels her start to tense up again just as he’s about to finish, so he squeezes his eyes shut against her ecstatic expression and thinks about Mount Weather.

 

Cement hallways; hazmat suits; radiation burns—

 

Clarke’s blonde head bent over a patient; the press of her fingertips in his palm, the same one he has resting over Echo’s mouth—

 

He yanks his hips back and spills across Echo’s stomach with a surprised groan. “Sorry, sorry,” he mutters when she slaps lightly at his shoulders and whispers curses at him in a language he (still) doesn’t understand. He’s never left a woman hanging, though, and Echo isn’t about to be the first, so he slips down under the blankets and gets to work.

 

After, she stretches out along his side and throws a leg over his. Bellamy settles his head against his pillow and walks his fingers up her thigh. She’s slender and lithe, her muscles long and wiry under her skin.

 

“You remember that guy I killed?” Bellamy says into the night, a bit husky since he’s trying to be quiet. “You held onto his wrist through your cage.”

 

Echo hums against his shoulder. “It was a good kill. I was surprised.”

 

“He has a son. I met him later, wearing his father’s uniform. He’s living with Maya, now—the girl that freed me. He’s…five years old, maybe?”

 

“This upsets you.”

 

Bellamy frowns, blinks up at the hodgepodge ceiling. “I killed his father. I’m the reason he’ll grow up without his dad.”

 

“His father shouldn’t have helped to bleed us dry for their benefit. War makes orphans, Bellamy. Even Sky People should know that.”

 

He doesn’t know what to say to that, because of course he knew. But knowing and _knowing_ are two different things, right? Echo’s breathing evens out soon after, but Bellamy stares up at the dome of his tent for a long time afterwards.

 

She’s gone in the morning, her clothing, too. When Bellamy arrives at the Council room, Kane breaks the news. The River Clan—Echo’s clan—has left, leaving only eight tribes with the Arkers, and, as of yet, virtually no intelligence as to whether the other four tribes plan to band together in a rival alliance.

 

(Well, thank god he never ended up venting to her.)

 

* * *

“Should it be that red?”

 

Clarke gives Miller a little smile and washes the bullet wound clean of the dried mud. “It’s not _un_ usual. It just means that there’s increased blood flow to the area, which is good. That means it’s bringing oxygen and nutrients to the healing flesh. But if you see red streaks, that when you should come get me.”

 

Miller nods, rubs his chin, and points to the bowl of greenish-brown sludge. “And what does that do again?”

 

It’s a mixture of herbs, mud, and honey, Clarke explains, a recipe given to her by Nyko and confirmed by reference to an old and fragile book in Abby’s possession. “It’ll protect the open skin and fight infection.”

 

“It seems dirty.”

 

Monty rolls his eyes. “It’s _my_ arm,” he reminds Miller. For his part, Miller doesn’t seem the slightest bit chagrined.

 

“She’s literally rubbing dirt into it!”

 

“There’s a reason that’s a catch phrase, man!” Miller crosses his arms anyway and Monty looks over at Clarke, apparently determined to ignore Miller. “Ignore him. I trust your dirt.”

 

Clarke hides her smile by looking jerking her chin at the fire in the middle of the tent. “Bring me the cloths I put over there earlier,” she instructs Miller as she finishes smearing the paste into the bullet wound and across an electrical burn on Monty’s palm. A makeshift pot of water hangs over the flame, full of clean river water. “The heat will increase circulation and will help the herbs and honey seep into your skin. And the wet heat will keep the mud moist.” She speaks loud enough for Miller to hear on purpose. “You’ll want to keep the hot bandages in circulation for a few hours, then you can take the pot off and just keep wet bandages on it. Make sure to wrap it with something dry and clean before bed, and keep it under the covers, alright? You don’t want it to freeze while you sleep.”

 

Monty salutes her with his good hand. “Got it, doc.” Miller even nods dutifully and without complaint, having listened to her instructions closely.

 

 _Dirt_ , Clarke thinks to herself, watching Miller wave the steaming cloth in the air for a few moments to cool it down before folding it and wrapping it around Monty’s hand with careful fingers. _He’s so full of shit._

“So,” Monty drawls out as Miller carefully ties off the cloth. “Apparently I’ve been assigned to agriculture after my hand heals up.”

 

Clarke rolls her eyes. She should have figured that the Council would want the kids to follow in their parents’ footsteps. It’s easy; predictable. “They think can learn from your dad.”

 

“As if his work in Mount Weather was just dumb luck.” Miller returns the glare Monty sends him. “You re-wired video cameras and overrode a radiation airlock. But they want you to plow a field.” He turns his gaze to Clarke. “You can say something to your mom, right?”

 

She purses her lips. “You should talk to Bellamy. He’s the one going to the Council meetings.”

 

“Talk to me about what?” Bellamy asks, rustling the plastic flap aside as he walks into the tent.

 

Miller doesn’t glance up from tying off the bandage over Monty’s bullet hole. “Chancellor Griffin assigned Monty to agriculture.”

 

“What?” Bellamy sets his hands on his hips and frowns at them. “They’re already assigning details to the kids?”

 

Monty nodded. “Clarke said to ask you about it.”

 

Bellamy’s eyes tick down at Clarke, who gives him a sure nod, then back to Miller and Monty. “And I take it that you don’t want to work in ag.”

 

“C’mon, man, you know I’m way better at engineering and electrical than I could ever be in ag.” Clarke hands Monty his shirt back and starts to pack up her backpack with the jar of salve and bandages and other supplies she’d brought to the back side of Camp Jaha that “the Delinquents,” or so they self-deprecatingly called themselves, had claimed since coming back from Mount Weather.

 

Bellamy scuffs his boot on the floor while he thinks. “I’ll talk to the Council about making unilateral assignments and see if I can get my hands on a list of open positions. With any luck, there’ll be something open with Wick or Raven. Send anyone else that’s not happy with their assignments to me.” Monty bobs his head, satisfied. “By the way, Miller—I just left the guard station and your dad wants you to know he’s eating with the Earlys tonight.”

 

Miller looks at Monty; Monty looks at Miller. “Alright,” Miller says. “I’ll eat here with Monty, then.”

 

“Alright,” Monty agrees, a small smile creeping across his lips.

 

Bellamy cuts a bemused look at Clarke, who quirks the eyebrow at him that Miller and Monty can’t see. “Alright, then,” Bellamy murmurs, and hides his smirk behind the hand he lifts to rub his nose.

 

Clarke shakes her head at Miller and Monty, now bickering lightly over Miller’s methodology for feeding the fire. _Full. Of. Shit._

* * *

Clarke sees Lexa from across Camp Jaha’s central clearing when the Commander arrives to meet with the Ark Council. She’s surrounded by her guards and tailed by Indra and Octavia, but they all look smaller, somehow, when they’re not all done up in their battle gear. The black kohl is gone from around Lexa’s eyes, so Clarke can tell when Lexa looks over at where she stands in the doorway to the medical wing of the crashed ship. She slows her pace, and Clarke lifts her hand in a wave of greeting.

 

Even from far away, Clarke can see the way Lexa’s brow furrows even as she returns the wave. One of Lexa’s guards leans down to say something in her ear, and the Commander’s gaze shifts ahead of her, to where Kane, Abby, and Bellamy have come to welcome her at the door to the Council’s chambers. Lexa waves her hand at her guard, clearly ordering them to wait outside, and then she and Indra follow the Council inside.

 

Clarke would be lying if she said she wasn’t curious about the discussions going on behind closed doors. But she trusts Bellamy to protect their interests, and she trusts Lexa and Kane to protect the alliance. They have clear eyes and wills of steel, and are thus much better suited to stand around the Council table than Clarke is.

 

Jackson calls her name from inside, and Clarke turns away from staring aimlessly at the semi-circle of grounder guards outside the Council chamber doors to help him pass out the afternoon rounds of medication.

 

A few hours later, Clarke hears the hails of the grounder guards as they leave, so she’s surprised to find Lexa in her tent when she leaves medical for the day. The other woman looks a bit out of place in the sparse tent, because even out of battle regalia, Lexa cuts an incredibly impressive figure with her cascade of intricately braided hair and her ground-sweeping cape.

 

“I thought you’d left.” Lexa turns at the sound of Clarke’s voice, putting down the slim book she’d been flipping through. It was one of Shakespeare’s plays that Clarke had snagged from the bunker the last time she was there. “How did you find my tent?”

 

“I asked for directions,” Lexa replies, voice frustratingly even, betraying nothing. “You weren’t at the Council meeting. Bellamy said that you were taking…a ‘break.’”

 

Clarke takes a deep breath and circles past Lexa to put her backpack down on the bed. Lexa turns with her, keeps her eyes on Clarke, maddeningly steady. “Yes. We won the war, we saved your people and my people from the mountain, and we’re all home safely. There’s no more need for me to be butting into where I don’t belong.”

 

“You led this war, Clarke. You organized the alliance between our tribes. You should help decide what happens next.”

 

The ties of her backpack come undone messily under Clarke’s fumbling fingers. She pulls out her spare shirt and pants and sets them on the low makeshift bench that serves as her closet. The rag she uses for her daily washing that she’d laundered at medical goes beside the container she keeps clean water in. “I told you before that I never asked for leadership. And Bellamy did just as much work, probably more, all on his own inside the mountain. I trust him to take my place.” Clarke pauses in her unpacking and huffs a sarcastic laugh. “’My place.’ I never actually had a place on the Council. I took it without asking.”

 

Lexa steps up beside Clarke and places her hand on Clarke’s shoulder. “Yes,” she agrees, eyes gleaming in encouragement. “You _took_ it. That’s what I meant before the battle. You were born for leadership, Clarke. Don’t run away now because you’re scared.”

 

Heat flares in Clarke’s belly and she jerks her shoulder, shaking off Lexa’s hand. “I’m not ‘running away,’” she hisses. “I’m making the logical decision to step back. It’s the _right_ decision. And scared? Of course I’m scared. I’m scared of _myself_. The things I did? The things _we_ did?” Clarke gestures between the two of them and sees Lexa’s eyes flicker. Her face begins to close off, the mask begins to slide into place, but Clarke isn’t about to fall so easily this time around into whatever new round of power politics Lexa wants to play at. “Those things scare me. That _I_ did those things _scares me_. My friends are safe. Your people are safe. That’s what I went to war for, so now I’m done deciding who lives and who dies.”

 

It’s Lexa the Commander who returns Clarke’s heated gaze now. “Someone has to, Clarke, and peace has not yet been won. Are you sure you’re going to be pleased with what _they_ decide?”

 

“I don’t know,” Clarke replies truthfully. “But given the things I’ve done, I won’t be in a position to pass judgment.”

 

Silence reigns for a long moment. Clarke can see Lexa thinking hard, the wheels turning in her mind, before she sighs and pulls her eyes from Clarke’s. “I see I’ve visited at a bad time,” she finally drawls, staring over Clarke’s shoulder. “I’m sorry to have intruded without asking.”

 

Clarke bites her lip as Lexa brushes past her, smelling of pine and crisp autumn air. “Lexa,” she says, before she stops herself and overthinks it. “You’re always welcome as a friend. But more than that—I can’t.”

 

Lexa’s turned back and her eyes drop to Clarke’s lips for half a beat. Clarke waits for Lexa to press her on exactly what she means—an ally? an advisor? a lover? Clarke isn’t even sure she would have the answer if Lexa asked. But instead, Lexa gives a tight nod, starts to say something, stops, and starts again. “The things we did, Clarke,” she says, slowly, choosing her words with care, “we did to save our friends from certain death, and to save ourselves from a similar fate the future. You’re struggling, but remember that.”

 

She ducks her head and leaves the tent without another word. Only after Clarke is certain the plastic has fallen back into place does she sit down on the bed. Lexa should be right, Clarke knows, but when she leans back and closes her eyes, all she sees is Finn’s face in the bunker, smiling softly up at her, and the feel of his thumb tracing her shoulder blade.

 

* * *

Medical is quiet after dinner, Bellamy’s learned. The patients drift off to sleep and the nurses curl up with well-read pamphlets and books during the quiet time. It’s usually Clarke’s favorite time to work on her filing system and to check in with the progress of patients’ wounds and pain levels. But she’s not here tonight, he realizes as he scans his eyes over the patients and staff.

 

“She lost a patient today; a baby,” a co-worker tells him when he asks after her. Her eyes drift over to a bed against the far wall as she says this. The woman in it lies curled on her side, looking bereft even in sleep. “We sent her home afterwards. You should check her tent.”

 

Outside, the sunset is nearly finished, just a smear of blood orange across the western horizon. People have started to head into their tents for the night, though a few guards fresh off duty play cards by the fire and wave to him as he passes by. He takes a left at the fork instead of a right to get to his own tent, and finds Clarke’s tent with its big blue patch on the front.

 

He isn’t sure what he expected, but ducking into Clarke’s tent to find her stretched out on the ground, surrounded by colored pencils, isn’t it. She’s sketching furiously, but abruptly she stops, crumples the paper she’s been working on, and tosses it aside. “Clarke?”

 

He hadn’t been particularly quiet when he came in, but she startles at his voice and peers back over her shoulder at him. “Bellamy!” She pats around in front of her, rolls to her hip to sit up and wiggles a bottle at him before she takes a swig from it. “Come drink with me.”

 

Bellamy drops onto her bed and reaches out to take the bottle from her. It’s wine, not moonshine, but she’s had a good three-quarters of the bottle already. She shrugs and laughs when he comments on it. “I finished off my other bottle earlier. And I have another. So drink up!”

 

Her blue eyes shine brightly in the light of her little fire, but they aren’t quite out of focus yet, so he brings the bottle to his lips again and takes a healthier swallow. “What are you working on?”

 

Almost instantly, her smile drops off her face. He grabs her shoulder, tells her she doesn’t have to tell him if she doesn’t want to, but she shakes her head. “I’m working on Finn. But I can’t get his mouth right.” Her hair slides forward and covers her face from Bellamy’s view as she spreads out the various half-sketches she’s done of Finn Collins. “I can get his hair—well, before Raven cut it, and his nose, and his eyebrows were straight, you know? But his mouth…I keep wanting to draw him smiling, but I can’t get it right.”

 

She hands him a sketch or two in exchange for the wine bottle and they’re _good_. He’d known that she was an artist the way he knows Monty is an electrician, but it’s almost like Finn is looking up at him again, judgey eyes and all.

 

“…I got the grounder I killed earlier. I remembered his tattoos,” she’s saying now.

 

“Wait—what grounder?” Bellamy asks, tearing his eyes from her sketch.

 

She passes him the portrait while taking a swig and waves her hand dismissively. “One of Anya’s men, back before even the drop ship rockets. I slit his throat so I could find Finn and get back to camp. Here’s Charlotte.” Clarke pulls another sketch from the pile and adding it to the two Bellamy held in his hands. “That high forehead and little nose…I didn’t know her very well but I remember her face. Anya,” she murmurs, picking up another sheet and running her fingers over the smudges of black around the portrait’s eyes. “And now a…a baby?”

 

A tear falls over Clarke’s lower lid when she blinks; Bellamy watches it slide down her cheek and hang, suspended, at the point of her chin. He breathes her name and sets aside the sketches she’s given him so he can set his hands on her shoulders and pull her back against his knees. It’s awkward, the way he’s bent over, arms wrapped around her chest, but he doesn’t let himself think about it. He’s not quite sure yet of all the things that Clarke needs right now, but a hug has to rank somewhere on the list.

 

“Everything that I touch dies.” Clarke brings the mouth of the bottle to her mouth and tips it upwards. The liquid sloshes inside the glass bottle; her throat bobs two, three, four times. “A woman’s body is built to deliver live babies and…it still died.”

 

Bellamy pushes himself off the bed to sit shoulder-to-shoulder on the floor with her. She stares into the fire, chin jutted forward in self-loathing. _Well, if we’re holding confession_ , Bellamy thinks, and takes the bottle from her hand. “I was the one to tell Charlotte to slay her demons,” he says, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “I kicked the stool out from under Murphy. I killed Lovejoy just for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

 

“I fired our engines and incinerated over three hundred people. I let ton DC burn. I could have killed Octavia, Bellamy.” She whirls on him, blonde hair flying. “I could have killed your _sister_.”

 

“The mountain men would have killed her.” Bellamy’s thought about it, he has. If Clarke’s horse had been slower, if Octavia had stayed behind to help evacuate, no matter the situation he dreams up, it’s still Mount Weather pushing the button to send the missile to kill her. “You did what had to be done.”

 

At his words, meant to be comforting, Clarke’s face crumples. “Everyone keeps saying that. That I _had_ to kill people,” she sobs. “I _had_ to? Is that what I really _had_ to do?”

 

 _Oh,_ Bellamy’s mind tells him. **_Oh_** _._

 

He sets the bottle down and hauls Clarke into his chest, cupping her head when she buries her face in his neck. She ends up lying half across his lap, her fingers twisting into the fabric of his sleeves, but Bellamy doesn’t care about the awkward strain it puts on his back; he just tightens his arms and rocks her side to side, side to side while she cries. It’s a messy cry, too—sobs coming from deep in her chest, tears soaking his shirt, wheezing and sniffling all throughout.

 

He realizes that he’s never seen her cry, not once. The closest she ever came was during Murphy’s hanging, and when she told him she couldn’t loose him after Finn. Of course, Clarke wouldn’t ever cry in front of anyone, and…he can’t remember the last time she was ever really alone, or had enough time to have a good cry. _And that’s when you get drunk and have a full-fledged meltdown_ , he thinks, running his fingers through the ends of her hair.

 

Eventually, her sobs slow until she’s just shuddering and gasping now and then, but her grip on him doesn’t wane, as though she needs to be tethered to something other than herself. He cards his fingers through the hair at the nape of her neck and squeezes her a little bit in reassurance.

 

“You’re good at this,” Clarke murmurs into his neck. At his questioning hum, she returns the little squeeze he’d just given her. “The comforting thing.”

 

“Older brother,” he reminds her. “Octavia had her fair share of angry cries on the Ark.”

 

Bellamy feels Clarke smile against his neck. “Why am I not surprised?” Stiffly, because lying all twisted up on the ground can’t have been comfortable for her either, she leans back and away from him, resting her weight into her palms and rolling her head on her neck. He sees her red, puffy eyes fall on the wine bottle, but he snatches it out of her reach before she gives action to the half-formed thought.

 

“I know you’re upset, but I think you’ve had enough for tonight,” he says as gently as he can, and she nods, but doesn’t move. “Okay, then, Princess, let’s get you to bed.”

 

“Finn called me ‘Princess,’” Clarke seems suddenly distant again when he grabs her hands and helps her to her feet. “That was the last thing he said to me. ‘Thanks, Princess.’ Because I…After I…” Her eyes start to well up again, and Bellamy guides her backwards a step or two until her knees hit the bed and she sits down.

 

“You kept him from a painful death.” Bellamy crouches at her feet and unlaces her boots.

 

“I think I knew.” Clarke shrugs out of her heavy hoodie after Bellamy unzips it. “When Raven put that knife in my hand, I knew I was going to have to kill him. But I still went out there.”

 

She’s staring at the opposite wall of the tent now, eyes wide but not glazed over. Bellamy knows she isn’t drunk—well, not so much that she doesn’t know what she’s saying—and she isn’t out of her mind and spouting nonsense. She’s just exhausted and has probably never talked about Finn with anyone. And to whom would she have? Not her mom, and not Raven. Lexa? _Maybe._ Bellamy can’t stop the frown from pulling the corners of his mouth down. He’d always been a bit suspicious of whatever he’d seen Lexa and Clarke talking about at Finn’s pyre, particularly since Clarke had gone all ice queen on him soon after.

 

Still, Clarke needs him _now,_ so Bellamy takes her hands in his and says her name, calling her back to the present. “Would you have wanted it to be anyone else? Because I don’t think Finn would have. He loved you, Clarke. You were his friend. And—knowing the way he was gonna die otherwise?” Bellamy shakes his head, runs his thumbs over the backs of Clarke’s knuckles. “I know what I would pick if I had that choice.”

 

“Well, I _know_ you wouldn’t want me to have the knife,” Clarke says with a bit of a watery smile, but she squeezes his hands in gratitude.

 

“Everyone else I hate more would have to be there for _that_ to happen.” He gives her a wink and stands up to nudge her shoulder so she lies back on the bed. “But—Octavia, I think. I think if it were a night of grounder torture or Octavia, I’d give Octavia a knife every time.” She frowns at him sleepily as he helps her pull the covers up to her chest. “I’m not lying to you. So, please, don’t cry anymore and get some sleep, okay?”

 

He turns to leave, meaning to blow out her lantern on his way, but she catches his wrist. “Stay, please, Bellamy,” she murmurs, voice thick with fatigue. “I was lying before. I don’t really want to be alone.”

 

If she were not so close to the brink of unconsciousness, Bellamy probably would have said no. But she’s fading so quickly into sleep that there’s no doubt that she just wants the weight and warmth of another body next to hers, the reassurance that someone’s there with her. So he leans down and tells her to roll over before he toes off his boots and takes off everything but his tshirt and long underwear. By the time he finally blows out the lantern, she’s dozing with her mouth open on the far side of the bed.

 

Bellamy shakes his head. All blonde hair and fair skin—it’s hard to believe sometimes that she’d forged a military alliance and led an army.

 

Her bed is a bit firmer than his, but he doesn’t mind too much. She murmurs his name, and he shushes her, tells her he’s there. She slides into his space a bit, snuggles down and curls up until he can feel the bend of her knees on the outside of his thigh and her forehead on his shoulder. One of her hands sneaks around his elbow and he lets her have it, rests that hand on his belly and works his head down into the pillow.

 

The wind ruffles the slack in the tent. He closes his eyes and listens for a bit to the flap of the plastic, the hum of low conversations outside, and the huffing exhales Clarke lets out as she sleeps. She smells woodsy and clean, like Echo; Clarke must have gotten her hands on some grounder soap somewhere along the way.

 

It’s the last thing he thinks about before falling asleep, and it’s the first thing he notices when he wakes up, his face pressed into her pillow and all. Clarke’s rolled onto her back, and him onto his stomach, but they’re still close enough that he can feel how warm she is. When he stretches out his legs and yawns, her eyes flutter open and she rolls her head to give him a sleepy smile and wish him a good morning.

 

The sun is bright this morning, warming up the tent a bit by shining through the plastic, so Bellamy doesn’t keep the blankets all the way to his neck when he lifts his head onto his palm and peers down at Clarke. “So you haven’t moved in with Raven because of the whole thing of her liking Wick’s dick?” She gives a little laugh and nods. He hasn’t seen her smile in a while, or at least not where it reaches her eyes and makes them crinkle in the corners. “Come stay with me and Octavia, then. I’m used to living with girls and I’ve got a pretty big tent. It shouldn’t be too cramped.”

 

Clarke bites her lip. “Only if you’re sure.” After last night, how could he not be? So he promises her he is positively sure, and she takes him up on his offer.

 

It takes them a grand total of two trips to move Clarke’s belongings into the Blakes’ tent.

 

Moving is a lot easier when nobody really owns anything anymore.


	2. Chapter 2

* * *

 

Living with Bellamy and Octavia should be more awkward than it is.

 

She has a bed all to herself at first. Octavia is all but a ghost the first few days, spending her days training with Indra and the other warriors and her nights with Lincoln. Bellamy struggles with the latter, Clarke knows, because the muscle in his jaw jumps and his lips press into a line when the sun sets, dinners are served and eaten, and still there’s neither hide nor hair of his younger sister. “Have you ever tried to tell Octavia to _not_ do something?” he replies with a dry laugh when Clarke asks him about it. “If I tell her to come home, she’ll stay away even longer.”

 

Then, one morning without warning, Clarke rolls over and bumps into Octavia’s shoulder. “Stay on your side,” the other girl mumbles. Bellamy’s across the tent, shrugging into his jacket, and the smile he sends their way when Clarke stutters out an apology in her sleep-thick voice is soft and unclouded by worry for the first time in days. He ruffles Octavia’s hair, tells her to be nice, and that he’ll see them both at dinnertime before he leaves.

 

The news reaches her mother sooner rather than later. “You’re living with Bellamy Blake?” Abby asks. She looks shocked and dismayed and it takes Clarke a minute to remember that the adults that came down on the Ark weren’t around when they all had to huddle together for warmth at night at the drop ship.

 

So--Clarke keeps herself from rolling her eyes and says, as calmly and rationally as she can, “Mom, I’m living with Bellamy and _Octavia_.” This clarification fails to impress Abby, who reminds Clarke that Octavia’s been living with the Woods Clan ever since Mount Weather and that she’s not comfortable with her daughter sharing a tent with a boy.

 

(And now her kiss with Lexa seems almost funny, in addition to all of the other tangled emotions Clarke has attached to it.)

 

“I like living there,” she says instead, organizing the little medicine cups on the trays in front of her. “And I’m eighteen now; I can live where ever I want. Besides, I share Octavia’s bed, if that makes you feel any better. I doubt even your worst opinions of Bellamy include him trying to seduce me right next to his sister.”

 

This caveat soothes the sharpest corners off of Abby’s disdain for her daughter’s new living arrangements, but Clarke never tells her mother how short-lived those sleeping arrangements would end up being.

 

Because Octavia is as active in her sleep as she is while awake, Clarke learns that very night, going from clinging starfish to a Nudging Nancy within the space of an hour. The third time she jolts Clarke awake (this time by rolling and taking the blankets with her), Clarke sits up and peers across the tent at the silent and still lump that she knows is Bellamy.

 

The dirt floor has gone chilly now that they’ve let the fire burn down to embers; Clarke takes bouncing leaps across it on bare toes and sits on the edge of his bed so she can poke at his shoulder. “Budge over,” she whispers.

 

“Wha--? Clarke?”

 

“Octavia is fighting off the Mountain Men in her sleep over there.” She pushes at his shoulder again. “Bellamy, please, it’s cold out here.”

 

With a grumble and the sound of blankets being beaten out of the way, he shimmies backwards and hands her the edge of the covers so she can slide between them. “Fuck, don’t you wear socks to bed?”

 

“I need to wash them. Can you—“

 

“Ah--Ow.”

 

“Sorry, I’m just—there’s a bar right here.”

 

“No, I know. It’s fine, it’s fine.”

 

Finally, they’re both arranged comfortably enough and Bellamy tugs the blankets up with a _harrumph_. She wiggles her shoulders down into the mattress, realizing that she’s laying where he had been, so his body heat had already pre-warmed the space for her. “I don’t know how Lincoln sleeps,” she whispers when she hears Octavia turn over once again.

 

He lets out a sleepy groan. “I don’t think about that. Really. And you’d better not knee me in my kidney before morning after putting up this much of a fuss,” he warns, turning onto his side and giving her his back.

 

“Sorry, sorry.”

 

He kicks his heel back to gently bump her shin. “Don’t worry about it, just go to sleep.”

 

When morning comes, Clarke awakens with Bellamy’s arm thrown haphazardly across her stomach, his face turned away from her and pressed into his pillow. She nudges him awake, not wanting to accidentally wrench his shoulder by over-extending it should she try to slide out from underneath it. He mumbles sleepily at her and rolls over onto his back, dragging the covers with him and throwing them over his face.

 

Despite her lingering disappointment in Clarke, which seems to have been tempered somewhat since their march towards the mountain, Octavia apologizes profusely for being a bad bunkmate. Clarke tries sleeping with her for two more nights and ends up creeping across the ground to Bellamy’s bed each time. He’s the one that puts an end to it on the fourth night, giving her his back while she changes for bed as usual, but then patting the mattress next to him and telling her to _just get in; you’re gonna end up over here anyway_.

 

Other than waking up with his erection against her hip or back on the rare occasion that he _doesn’t_ end up sleeping on his stomach, Bellamy’s a surprisingly good and low-key bedmate. It’s more to Clarke than not being kicked or jostled—it’s jerking awake past midnight, heart in her throat, and having his steady breathing to listen to as she loosens her grip on the blankets. It’s easing awake in the morning with the weight of him next to her, warm and solid as she steels herself for another cold and damp morning. It’s the quiet conversations on the edge of sleeping and waking about crunchy dinner rolls and Miller’s beard and _fucking drums just one goddamn night for the love of god_ to ease through those times of the day that had been hardest for Clarke when she’d been all alone in her own tent.

 

(She still doesn’t dare breathe even a hint of it to her mom.)

 

* * *

 

When the last of the grounders have been cleared for travel by Abby and Clarke, Lexa makes a second trip to meet with the Ark Council. Bellamy’d been on edge since the night before, when the notice had come that the Commander requested an audience with the Ark Council. His knee jiggled through dinner and he tossed and turned in bed until Clarke threatened to kick him over to Octavia’s bed. “The alliance could collapse tomorrow,” he’d explained by way of apology.

 

Clarke’d patted his shoulder with the back of her hand. “Lexa won’t let that happen. But you can’t argue on no sleep so— _stop_ moving, please.”

 

The Council and Lexa stay closed up in the Council chambers through lunch and well into the afternoon. With fewer patients in the clinic than she’d become used to, Clarke strips bed linens for washing, boils fabric for bandages, takes an inventory of the moonshine and medicine they have left, checks on the herbs they’d started drying in the smokehouse. “You run as tight a ship as your mother,” Jackson says, and he means it as a compliment, so Clarke returns his smile instead of rolling her eyes.

 

Everyone seems to visibly relax when the doors to the Council chambers open. Kane and Abby are smiling, Lexa…isn’t frowning, and Bellamy seems much less agitated than he had that morning. Clarke can all but see the Guardsmen loosen their grips on their rifles. Clarke leans against the wall of the Ark and pops a handful of nuts into her mouth while she watches Lexa exchange a few words with the Council before she shakes their hands and departs. _Peace it is, then_ , she thinks, and lets herself enjoy a sigh of relief.

 

“She’s giving us the camp and the surrounding area as our own, and hunting and fishing rights on the Woods Clan territory,” Bellamy recounts later that night in their tent. Octavia has returned to the grounder camp with Indra, leaving them alone. “She wants to trade food and other supplies we’re short on in exchange for medical information and technology. She wants some radios or walkie talkies, in particular. And in case shit goes sideways with those other clans, she’ll help us defend ourselves. It’s basically a goods-for-info sort of agreement.”

 

Clarke watches the muscle in his jaw twitch as he pokes his spoon around in his stew. Over on his own bed, he’s taken about one bite per half-dozen stirs, and his eyebrows keep twitching together. “It seems like a good deal,” Clarke says from where she sits on top of Octavia’s tidily made-up blankets. Bellamy stabs at a potato. “So, why are you so upset about it?”

 

His eyes flit between hers and his bowl a few times. “You don’t have to worry about it. I know you don’t want to think about this stuff anymore.”

 

“I don’t want to be in charge any more,” Clarke corrects. “That doesn’t mean you can’t talk to me about it if you want to.”

 

Bellamy considers this as he chews. Finally: “She just seems different. Lexa, I mean. She was this—hardcore, no-holds-barred, calculating Amazon woman who killed her own personal guard without so much as a stutter. Finn had to _die_ before we could even think about solidifying the alliance. She nearly had Raven killed on the _idea_ that she might have poisoned the drinks. And now she wants to cooperate? To trade? To meet half-way? When we’re going to be a drain on their own food and supplies?” He shakes his head. “I just don’t get it. My gut tells me that she’s being genuine—she seemed honest during the negotiations—but my head is setting off all sorts of alarms and telling me to not trust her as far as I can throw her.”

 

Clarke rolls her eyes. “She’s smaller than me.”

 

“Please. All that armor’s gotta add at least thirty pounds. The eye makeup another pound.” He sets his bowl aside and collapses onto one elbow, stretching along the length of his bed. “You spent all the time with her. What do you think? Is she good for her word?”

 

_Not all of them. Not you._ Clarke pushes down the memory of Lexa’s soft gaze, of her mouth against Clarke’s own. That is _not_ what Bellamy is asking about. “She’s not the most diplomatic, that’s for sure. But,” Clarke shrugs, searching for how to distill into a few words everything that she and Lexa had argued about. “She’s been at war her whole life—she’s been in charge of just _surviving_ for so long that I think she doesn’t know how to do anything else. So, she and I disagreed about the things we did. Obviously.” Clarke thinks back again, and repeats what she said to Lexa. “I told her that we should do more than just survive, that we deserved more than that. I think she listened.”

 

“So you trust her to keep her word?”

 

Clarke nods, sure of this one thing, at least. “Yes.”

 

* * *

 

Lexa sends for her not too long after dinner, but late enough that the messenger surprises them. Bellamy asks if she wants company, but she turns him down. She has a feeling it’s a personal invitation, not a business one.

 

Sure enough, Lexa’s tent is empty of all advisors and shieldmaidens, and Lexa offers Clarke a small cup of wine after she dismisses the messenger who had accompanied Clarke to his _heda_ ’s tent. “It’s not too strong, I promise.” Lexa’s smile is soft, a bit nervous. Clarke takes the cup and takes a sip to put Lexa at ease.

 

“So, you’re leaving tomorrow?” Clarke asks, once they’re settled at the table, a plate of dried fruit between them.

 

“Ton DC needs to be rebuilt. It will be a long project through the winter and it’s best we get started as soon as possible. Indra is anxious to begin the sorting for new warriors and to begin Octavia’s formal training.” Lexa draws her finger around the rim of her cup. “You may come with us, Clarke. If you feel your duties to your people are finished, then you could come with me.”

 

With a small sigh, Clarke tucks her chin to her chest, taps her thumbs on the small earthen cup. _Leave them? Now? After everything?_ “I can’t, Lexa.”

 

“I know.” Lexa’s hand, deceptively small, reaches out to rest on top of Clarke’s wrist. “I had to ask. For myself, you understand. And you are, as you have said to me, always welcome.”

 

She rises from the table and crosses to a small chest beside the pile of furs and blankets that make up her bed. After rummaging around for a moment, she returns with a small brass ornament threaded onto a red string. It’s a near-perfect copy of the talisman she presses to her forehead before battle. “This is my sigil. I’m not sure what the future holds with the alliance fracturing, but holding it means that you have my protection.” She holds it out it out for Clarke, who takes it with careful fingers. “It won’t break,” Lexa promises with a dry smile before she clears her throat and taps her fingertips on the tabletop. “You should keep it with you when you travel outside of camp.”

 

“The Sky People’s commitment to the alliance isn’t enough?” Clarke means for it to be a light joke, but it comes out a bit flat. A muscle flexes in Lexa’s jaw as she shifts her gaze across the tent to where a map hangs from the supports.

 

“I wish it were, and I would hope that the other clans—their resistance to a military alliance with you notwithstanding—would seek to keep peace. But I feel that the war is not yet done, and that this peace is fragile.”

 

Lexa grinds the words out; Clarke can tell the fracturing of the alliance gnaws at the other woman. “You’ll rebuild it, Lexa,” she says, leaning forward and resting an elbow on the table. “They made a hasty decision, and when they see how we can all live together in harmony, they’ll come back.”

 

The candlelight flickers across Lexa’s face, warm and soft. “It must be nice,” she says quietly, one corner of her mouth quirked up, “to believe in the best of everyone.”

 

Clarke shakes her head. “Not everyone, and not all the time. It’s still a choice, though. You can choose to think that way, if you wanted.”

 

_Finn used to believe in the best of everyone, so someone should now_ , is what she leaves unsaid, but it’s what she thinks about all the way back to camp after Lexa shakes her hand in farewell. Finn passing Jasper the vine to swing across the river, Finn trying to calm the waters between her and Wells, Finn cutting Murphy down from his noose, Finn arranging the ill-fated peace talks with Anya…

 

So engrossed in her own head is Clarke that she doesn’t even notice that Octavia isn’t in the tent until she’s changed for bed and she notices that Octavia’s bed is still made up from the morning. And that Bellamy has barely said two words to her since she returned from Lexa’s.

 

He’s lying on his bed, book open above his face. When she stops in the middle of the two beds and looks down at him, he glances up at her and arches a brow. “She’s going with them, isn’t she?” Clarke asks, rhetorically. “Are you alright?”

 

The muscle in his jaw jumps; he turns a page of _MacBeth_. “She’s going to be training with Indra. I’ll be alright.” He shifts his eyes back to the page, but his eyes don’t move to run along lines of text. Clarke backs up and sits down on the edge of Octavia’s bed, folds her hands in her lap. After a moment, he sighs and drops the book to his chest. “I keep telling myself that she survived in the sky box without me, and she survived when we were separated, that she survived when I was in Mount Weather. Hell, I hear she got her ass kicked by grounders and got back up and got a sword for it. It’s good for her to have her own life now, to figure out what she wants, but I’ve spent almost all of my life thinking that…keeping her still, and keeping her closed in—in the apartment, I mean—was the only way to keep her safe. And ‘safe’ was the only thing that mattered. Not whether she was happy, or even wanted to be there in the first place or whatever.” Bellamy scrubs at his face. “It’s just hard to teach yourself to think a different way.”

 

“Well, _I_ think you’re doing a good job,” Clarke announces, decisively turning down the blankets of Octavia’s bed. “And she’ll only be a short ride away. I’m sure you’ll see her more than you think you will.”

 

The grateful smile Bellamy sends her way as he reaches over his head to turn out the lantern leaves her chest feeling lighter than it had in days.

 

* * *

 

Tonight, though, she doesn’t bump into Bellamy and jolt herself awake when her nightmares come. She has a whole bed to herself—a whole mattress to roll on; a wide, barren desert leaving her exposed to the whirlwind of her sleeping mind.

 

Her hands are inside Finn, now, holding his heart, knowing that squeezing it will launch the drop ship rockets and send blood pouring down the throat of Anya’s guard. She starts to pull his heart out of him, to close the drop ship door, but he seizes her shoulders.

 

“Clarke, Clarke—“

 

She lashes out and grabs onto Bellamy’s elbows, finishes kicking her legs and lets them fall back down in the tangle of blankets they’ve worked themselves into. He’s just a dark shape above her right now, but she’d know that messy silhouette of half-curls anywhere. Her mouth opens but nothing coherent comes out—just a gasp and a half-cry—and he pulls her up to sit, wraps his arms around her shoulders and runs his hand over her hair.

 

“It’s just a nightmare,” he promises her, his chest rumbling against hers. “That’s it. It’s gone now.” She clings to him, fingers going sore with the strength of her grip. Eventually, he crawls into bed with her, lets her curl up beside him like she’d done the night in her tent.

 

Her eyes ache the next morning. She can tell without looking in a mirror that they’re puffy and red, and the delicate skin around her eyes stretches weirdly as she blinks herself awake. _Salt_ , she thinks distantly, yawning. Bellamy is still asleep next to her, more on his side than his stomach this morning, but his eyelashes flutter against his freckled cheeks when she turns to her belly and heaves a sigh into her pillow.

 

“Sorry I woke you up last night,” she murmurs when he drums his fingers along her wrist and hums a good morning.

 

“Don’ worry ‘bout it.” He rolls onto his back and yawns widely, with the type of unconcerned abandon that only **_men_** can truly inhabit. For a few minutes, they lie in the quiet of the morning; people move past the tent outside, their _hellos_ and _how are yous_ coming through the plastic a bit muffled, but no less genuine. Most of the birds have flown south, meaning winter is well and truly coming, but now and then a hoot or a trill sounds from off in the woods.

 

Just when Clarke starts to shift her legs around, getting ready to sit up, Bellamy puts a hand behind his head and cuts her a glance from the corner of his eyes. “Since Octavia is leaving,” he starts slowly, “I was thinking that you would take her bed. Otherwise, we could put a table here, if you wanted. It’s up to you, really.”

 

Clarke rests her chin on her fist, looks past Bellamy’s face to the bed he’d left behind in the middle of the night. It was nice having him with her, and he hadn’t once put a finger on her for any reason other than comfort or sleep-sprawling. And, “It’s going to get even colder, soon,” she notes. “It’s probably a good idea to share body warmth.” On the Ark, this would have earned a snicker or a leer, but Bellamy only nods thoughtfully, because it _is_ true. “Having a table would be nice, I think, so we don’t keep spilling food onto the blankets. And when the others come to see you, they won’t keep sitting on _this_ bed,” she finishes with a sleepy wink, and Bellamy laughs. “They love you, but you still intimidate them, you know.”

 

He nods, stretches his arms over his head, and yawns again. “I’ll have to work on that, then.”

 

* * *

 

At the next council meeting, Bellamy gets Monty reassigned to engineering under Wick and Harper to medical with Clarke. When Councillor Lawrence tells him they’d wanted her to go to mechanical because she was born on Factory Station, Bellamy blinks at him and says, slowly, as though speaking to a child: “She had several bone marrow extractions not even a month ago. You _cannot_ assign her to manual labor right now.”

 

His request for a complete list of the Delinquents’ assignments also doesn’t go smoothly. “How many reassignments are you aiming for, exactly, Mr. Blake?” Councillor Early asks.

 

“I don’t know,” Bellamy replies, forcing an evenness to his voice when he really just wants to tell the woman to go float herself. “’Exactly’ how many of these job assignments have you made based on where these kids were born?”

 

He lays the list on the table for some of the kids to look over after dinner. Clarke had the table sent over from medical, where it had served as a makeshift bed back at the height of the recovery period after the sack of Mount Weather. She’d also rounded up a few spare chairs and boxes to set around it and took the lantern that had been at the head of Octavia’s bed and placed it in the middle of the table. She’s out now, though, working her shift at medical until it closes down for the night.

 

Jasper pours himself and Harper a cup of moonshine from the jar, and a half cup for Fox. “I’m fine with Agro,” he shrugs. “Fox?”

 

“Kitchen is alright,” she agrees. “Better than Construction or Agro.” Fox shoots an apologetic glance at Jasper, but he just gives her a friendly nudge with his elbow.

 

“Well, you’re only fourteen,” Bellamy adds. “If you’d been assigned to anything else, I would have pulled you, whether you’d liked it or not. You shouldn’t be doing so much heavy lifting or dangerous work so young.”

 

Harper gives Bellamy a sly look over her cup. “So says the man who had us all building a wall the day after we landed on Earth.”

 

She’s only teasing, but she’s right, and Bellamy’s mouth thins into a line when he thinks back to the selfish and domineering leader he’d been at the very beginning. _You still intimidate them_ , Clarke had said. “That was a different time,” he says gruffly, takes a swig of his moonshine, and is grateful when everyone lets it go without another word.

 

Bellamy makes an effort to _not_ be intimidating anymore, to better learn the quirks and wants and needs of the forty-odd kids they pulled out of the Mountain. He keeps the flap to the tent open when he’s home and asks the kids to eat dinner with him now and then. He learns that Lauren and Mel have been sleeping on the ground in their tent, sharing their few blankets between them, so he pokes around until he finds what will pass for a serviceable cot for them. Jay’s tent has a gash in the side that he’s managed to patch together; Bellamy gets him a fresh tarp to replace the whole side. When Bellamy sees that one of Fox’s shirtsleeves is all but detatched at the shoulder seam, he snags a needle and thread from medical and talks to her about her hours in the kitchen while he sews it back together.

 

The table in Bellamy and Clarke’s tent becomes a popular hangout for off-duty Delinquents. Miller tutors the younger guardsmen on how to disassemble, clean, and reassemble their guns. Raven tinkers by lamplight with the radios she’s building while recounting the gossip she’s heard over the walkie talkies. Wick joins her now and then, one arm draped across the back of her chair, and even Clarke laughs at his ridiculous jokes in between the margin notes she jots in an old and weathered medical textbook she found.

 

When the Ark starts school again, Bellamy makes a show of quizzing the younger kids on their history and English. He can’t help the tangents he goes down sometimes, talking about Hannibal’s march over the Alps and how Leonidas of Sparta held off the Persians while vastly outnumbered at the Battle of Thermopylae. The kids love it though, badger him for more stories about Cleopatra and Nefertari and Genghis Khan, and Clarke teases that he missed his calling as a teacher. 

 

It’s when he finds out that four of the youngest kids have been staying in a tent all by themselves that he calls the first _official_ meeting. Miller, Monty, Jasper, and Clarke are the exceptions, not the rule; the vast majority of the Delinquents’ parents died in either in the Exodus crash or in the Ark’s fall to the Earth’s surface.

 

Clarke wants to look them over before any decisions are made, so he collects all four of them and ushers them through the tent flap a little ahead of time. “Take a seat,” he says, and Clarke pulls out one of the chairs and pats the seat of it.

 

Rachel, the nine year old, goes first, turning her head this way and that as Clarke brushes her hair back, looks in her ears and down her throat, holds up fingers for her to count with one eye closed.

 

“Why didn’t you guys tell anyone you were living alone?” Bellamy asks, crouching beside ten-year-old Jake.

 

The boy takes a bite of one of the apple quarters Bellamy had given to them when they’d come in. “No one really asked? Besides, we’ve been living alone since we got down here. We didn’t think it was going to be any different now.”

 

Erik is also nine, and the only thing that Clarke can find wrong with him is that he seems to be a bit nearsighted. He tells her that his glasses had gotten lost in Mount Weather. “We don’t have any more pairs of glasses, so you’ll just have to tell people when you’re having trouble seeing, alright?” Erik nods dutifully at Clarke, and she looks over her shoulder at Bellamy. “Maybe the grounders have figured something out? They’ve been on the ground longer. Maybe there’s a way to scavenge up a pair.”

 

Bellamy makes a mental note. “I’ll ask next time we talk to ton DC.”

 

Josie is the oldest, at twelve, and when Clarke palpates her torso through her shirt and feels the sharp angles of her ribs, she admits to giving up some of her food to Erik and Jake ever since Mount Weather. “Because I’m the oldest. I take care of them,” she tells Bellamy when he asks why, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world.

 

Bellamy’s throat tightens, because _she’s only twelve_ , and nods in agreement with Clarke, who tells her, “Well, we’re in charge of _you_ , so you should tell us when you’re hungry or tired of sick from now on, alright?” and writes her a note for rations and a half for the next month.

 

The kids stay at the table when the other Delinquents file in, with Bellamy sitting at the head. Clarke all but physically recoils to the back of the room, merging in with the others in the back row. She can’t really hide, though, not with that blonde hair, but Bellamy does his best to not search her expression or look to her for wordless guidance as he starts talking to the group.

 

“Being sent down in the drop ship meant that the council thought it was fine for you all to live independently, and we all did a good job of it until the attack. We’re still doing a good job. But it’s something completely different for these kids to be living by themselves so young,” Bellamy explains, and is relieved when most of the faces in the crowd nod along. He’d called them there to ask them to shuffle tents, he explains, for those who have space to take in these kids, keep an eye on them and take them under their wings, and hands shoot up to volunteer as soon as he’s done speaking.

 

He aches in a good way later that night, after he’s helped move beds and blankets and carried the kids’ stuff for them, and his mattress feels wonderful under his back when he collapses back onto it. Exhausted from her shift, Clarke had already turned down the lantern and slipped into bed before him. She’s warm and quiet when she rolls over to face him, her eyes reflecting the slight amount of light still in the tent even after he turns the lantern all the way off.

 

“I’m starting to think being an older sibling should be a prerequisite to being in charge,” she murmurs sleepily.

 

Bellamy turns onto his side, too, and tugs the blankets up over both of their shoulders. “You just disqualified yourself, then.”

 

She chuckles, and the breathy quietness of it rolls down Bellamy’s spine, ending in a pleasant twist in his belly. He’s glad for the darkness; it surely covers up his startled expression, because she rolls onto her back and wishes him a good night. Her breathing slowly evens out into a light and feminine snore, and Bellamy turns to his stomach, presses his face into the pillow, and thinks about counting sheep.

 

* * *

 

She wakes up curled up against his back, face nuzzled into the nape of his neck. His back is soft-solid against her forearms, folded up against her chest between the two of them, and she lets herself press closer to the heat of his body and the familiar Bellamy-smell of him for a few breaths before she pulls herself away and rolls out of bed to get dressed for the day.

 

(Back under the blankets, Bellamy keeps his eyes closed and swallows thickly.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Editing post 2x15:
> 
> “So you trust her to keep her word?” | Clarke nods, sure of this one thing, at least. “Yes.”
> 
> HAHAHHAH.
> 
> HAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHA *SOBBING.*


	3. Chapter 3

Winter on Earth is more brutal than Clarke could have ever imagined.

 

It’s frigidly cold and the days turn ever shorter to accomplish what needs to be done. She and Bellamy huddle together at night, with even their heads down under the blankets on the coldest nights. Food is scarce, spare clothing even scarcer. The battle for Mount Weather had left a body count, of course, but the bittersweet reality is that the hydroponic gardens on Level 1 are producing an excess of food. In return for the Ark’s medical services, the mountain men send the doctors home to Camp Jaha with bags stuffed full of berries, root vegetables, corn, ground cornmeal and a bit of flour, and more.

 

Between that and the squirrels and rabbits the Earth Skills masters snared here and there, they stay just on this side of true starvation. But medical stays busy with spells of lightheadedness, with bouts of dry heaving, with unshakable fatigue, with missed periods causing pregnancy scares. So, when a troupe of grounders march through the gate a week after the first major snowfall with the carcasses of three stags, two does, and a handful of turkeys, and some live chickens squawking from where they hang upside down from the grounders’ saddles, Clarke could have _cried_.

 

The turkeys need to be plucked and the deer need to be skinned before they freeze and the grounders gesture for the sky people to gather round and learn. Clarke finds herself standing between Bellamy and Kane beside one of the does, watching the teen boy, Rojer, deftly pull away the hide of the animal. He speaks slowly, carefully, asking over and over again, _You understand? You understand?_. When he’s finished with the right side, he presses his knife into Clarke’s palm and tells her to try.

 

The knife goes through the fascia easily enough, and Rojer instructs her to try shorter strokes when she keeps nicking the muscle underneath. It helps her hug the curvature of the animal’s body more easily, but sooner rather than later, she struggles to manage the bulk of the body and the growing flap of its hide. The urge to just cut it away is strong, but life on the Ark has already given her the life lesson of never wasting _anything_ , and life on the ground has taught her how much superior animal hides are at retaining body heat compared to woven blankets.

 

Bellamy’s hands appear under her own, take the loose hide from her left hand and pull it out from the doe’s body. It makes it easier to see where the knife should go and she starts to slice more confidently towards the doe’s shoulder. “The tendon will loosen her leg,” Bellamy notes, practically into her ear as he reaches across her to pull the animal’s leg straight up into the air.

 

Between the two of them and comments from Rojer, Clarke and Bellamy finish skinning the doe, with Kane and Rojir helping to move the bulk of the beast when needed. “For the most hungry,” Rojir says when he pulls out the doe’s organs and passes Kane the liver, kidneys, and heart on a trough of wood.

 

Under the direction of Abby and Jackson, the youngest kids and some of the skinnier adults get the organ meats for dinner that night, sliced and spitted and turned over the fire. Clarke watches in jealous amusement as they make faces at the taste and texture, even though they gobble up their portions and suck the juices from their fingers. The rest of them have stew with diced venison—not nearly as much as they would have liked, but the rest of the deer and turkeys hang in the smokehouse all night and for most of the next day until Rojir’s father, Warren, determines that they are fully cured and can be stored.

 

Bellamy, Miller, Monty, and Jasper work through the night to throw together a hen house and a separate pen for the rooster. By morning, the hens are untied and clucking away happily exploring their new home. The hens won’t regularly produce eggs until springtime, Warren warns them, but once they start, the Camp will be able to build their own flock. They already bring a welcome amount of amusement, though, as Clarke, Harper, and Fox lean over the wall of the pen and start to give the hens names.

 

“Why are you naming them?” Miller asks, grumpy with lack of sleep. “We might have to eat them if we don’t have enough food.”

 

Fox’s mouth drops open in horror, already attached to Lady and Pearl and Amythyst and the other hens that she’s named, warbling to each other and oblivious to the conversation going on about their hypothetical fate. Harper hooks her arm through Fox’s and frowns back at Miller, incredibly far from amused. “I doubt a handful of skinny chickens would save the whole camp from starving to death,” she counters drily. “Besides, aren’t you on guard duty these days? Fox and the kitchen group make the food decisions around here.”

 

Miller huffs and tells Harper without much force that he liked her better before she got a gun and Bellamy laughs at him. “And you liked the name I gave to the rooster, Miller!”

 

Clarke cuts him a mirthful look from the corner of her eye. He’s dirty and sweaty, with cuts across his hands and dirt under his nails, but he’s proudly resting his hand on the corner post of the henhouse. “Let me guess—Julius? Emperor of Camp Jaha’s Lady Fowl?”

 

He clears his throat, crosses his arms over his chest. “Zeus.” Fox and Harper giggle behind Clarke, and she’s in a good enough mood to wink at Bellamy when he presses his lips together and fails to hold back his own self-deprecating chuckle. “Alright,” he says, dusting off his palms. “I’m going to clean up and get some sleep before the Council meeting later this afternoon. They want to restrict out-of-camp privileges to the adults, so I’ve got to get my rest before heading in to war.” He tugs a lock of Clarke’s hair as he passes behind her, lets his hand drift across her shoulder blades as he goes.

 

A grin rests on Clarke’s face all the way to medical, because she thinks that _finally_ everything is on the upward swing. With appetites satiated, medical clears out. Clarke finally takes a day off and sleeps past lunchtime, awakening only when Bellamy sits on the bed next to her and waves a piece of deer jerky under her nose. Even with all of his Council duties and keeping tabs on the forty-four kids they brought back from Mount Weather, he always knows when she’s forgotten to eat and isn’t above physically standing in her way and refusing to move until she scarfs down a little bowl of Fox-provided porridge or stew.

 

Warren and his fellow hunters return at the next moon’s turn to begin to train a group of men and women (Monroe and Jasper included, since Bellamy had won on the out-of-camp issue) in archery and spear throwing. They take Clarke and Harper and a few guards back to their village to put a guy’s torso back together after a run in with a boar. While they’re there, Clarke and Harper check on the wounded the Ark had cleared for travel those weeks before and only have to chastise one warrior for not staying off of his leg.

 

As if it had been waiting for morale in the camp to rise, the flu strikes hard and fast the day after Harper, Clarke, and Jackson don’t have a single patient all day long and do nothing but clean and scrub medical from top to bottom. As soon as they recognize the symptoms, Clarke throws a bandana over her face and races out the door, heading for the Council chamber. She recognizes the back of Bellamy’s head in the hallway and calls out his name, grabs onto his shoulder when he wraps an arm around her waist and pulls her in close to keep her from falling over due to her own breakneck speed.

 

“What’s going on? Are you alright?” he asks, looking down at her bandana.

 

“I’m fine but we’ve got a case of the flu. The Council needs to institute a quarantine protocol _now_ if we want to keep this small. Mom and Chief Miller will know what to do.”

 

“Got it.” Bellamy gives her a gentle push back the way she came, and his own boots pound towards the Council chamber.

 

Non-essential personnel are confined to quarters; communal spaces are closed until further notice; persons experiencing symptoms are to immediately report to medical for quarantine and treatment. Kitchen personnel work all day to not only make the meals, but also to deliver them door-to-door (or tent-flap to tent-flap, as it were). Council meetings are suspended, so Abby returns to medical to help bear some of the weight with the overloaded staff.

 

It doesn’t even occur to Clarke to separate herself from Bellamy.

 

In fact, she goes three days sleeping next to him before she sits bolt upright early one morning and exclaims that she could be getting him sick.

 

“’M fine,” Bellamy replies, eyes half-lidded in the grey light filtering through the plastic. “If you were gonna get sick, you woulda already, right? ‘Nd same for me.” He grunts when she presses her fingers to the warm skin of his throat, checking the speed of his pulse. “Your fingers are cold.”

 

His pulse is fine, his skin warm from sleep but not overly-hot, his breathing sounds clean and lacks the crackling sounds of congestion. “Any nausea? Lack of appetite?” So cued, his stomach growls dutifully. “Fatigue?”

 

“’Course, you just woke me up,” Bellamy huffs and puts a hand under his head. Clarke’s eyes immediately fall to the crisp black hair under his arm and the lean definition of his upper arm and chest and her throat suddenly goes dry in time with the little somersault her stomach does. She pulls her eyes away, sends them tripping over the neckline of his tank, her pillow, the far tent support pole, and then back to Bellamy’s face. “I’m fine,” he repeats, closing his eyes and tugging on her elbow. “C’mon. Let’s go back to sleep while we still can.”

 

Clarke’s mind is still skipping, so she doesn’t answer, just scoots back down into the warm cocoon of blankets. She really should think more about how comfortable she is when Bellamy curls up behind her and resumes his light snoring into her hair, but that’s the thing about being comfortable—she drifts off to sleep before she can put forth the cognitive effort she wants to.

 

Never one to make anyone’s life easy, John Murphy chooses this time to return to camp. He’s got a backpack full of booze, a severely-infected wound on his arm, and a message: “Some Princess Leia hologram has a nuke.”

 

“Where is Thelonius?” Abby asks, even as Councillor Early asks who Princess Leia is.

 

Clarke thinks its best to not warn Murphy before she pours moonshine over the open and oozing wounds of his forearm. She’s rewarded with a string of curses, but it was worth it for how his arm had stayed still until it was pretty much over. “Jaha’s gone full crazy,” Murphy grinds out, shaking from the pain, and snatches the bottle of moonshine from Clarke to take a few long swallows. “Like, cult-crazy. He thinks he has a destiny. A _real_ one. Last I saw him, he was running after a drone into the woods.”

 

Clarke looks up from where she’s been bent over his arm and locks eyes with Bellamy. “Hold him,” she directs, reaching behind her for more linens and salted water. “I’ve got to clear this debris out manually. You might want to take another shot of that moonshine, Murphy.”

 

Murphy swears under his breath, but when she turns back around with a strip of sterile cloth wrapped around her finger, he’s leant his head back against the table and squeezed his eyes shut, and Bellamy’s braced his hands on Murphy’s shoulders.

 

Clarke learns _all sorts_ of new vocabulary that afternoon.

 

* * *

 

She and Bellamy have grown comfortable enough in bed that Clarke doesn’t even ask to roll into his body heat on cold nights, and she knows that stressful council meetings are directly and positively correlated to the likelihood that he’ll pull her close at night. He gives her the short versions of most of the meetings, though certainly Clarke’s been his sounding board for longer rants. They lie side by side in the mornings, too, running through their plans for the days through yawns and closed eyes. Sometimes the feel of his morning erection is the first thing she feels in the morning, and somewhere along the way it stopped being weird. After all, _it’s not inherently sexual_ , her doctor’s mind reminds her, when she thinks about it too much. _It’s just a fluctuation in his hormones_. Still, Clarke pulls her hips back and away when he inevitably sighs or mumbles into her ear, voice low and rough from sleep, or she breathes in his heady man scent, and her stomach does that flip flop that she’s started noticing but tries her best to ignore.

 

The evening before a diplomatic detatchment is due to arrive from Polis, Raven stops by to give Bellamy a heads up on the progress on the radios and walkie talkies for the grounder tribes. According to the messenger, the detachment was to be headed by Indra, meaning that Octavia would be with her, and Raven seems relieved that at least one person in Polis would know the basics of how a radio frequency works.

 

Once Clarke pulls out a wineskin and starts pouring drinks, though, the talk quickly turns from work to play. Clarke and Raven tease Bellamy about his prized chickens, he shrugs it off good-naturedly and asks Raven with a wink how her _stoichiometry_ is going with Wick. Clarke groans when they gossip about her mother and _Kane_ of all people, so Bellamy rocks his chair onto its back legs with a laugh and changes the subject to Murphy’s collection of booze and how he’s let Bellamy try the whisky but won’t share the scotch with anyone but the medical staff painstakingly putting his arm back together.

 

Raven’s chuckle is forced, but Clarke has to wait until one of the kids unexpectedly pulls Bellamy away to help them re-pole their tent after the day’s storm to ask about it. “What’s that about?”

 

“What’s what?” The youngest zero-G mechanic in 50-odd years is a _terrible_ liar after a glass of wine.

 

Clarke arches a brow. “Bellamy mentioned Murphy and you sort of clammed up. Are you okay?”

 

“It’s nothing.”

 

Clarke leans forward on the table. “Did he do something to you? You should tell Chief Miller if he did—“

 

“Ugh!” Raven throws her hands in the air. “We hooked up, alright?!” With a huff, she drops her face into her hands to avoid Clarke’s shocked stare.

 

“Hooked…up? Since he’s been back?” Clarke’s voice gets progressively higher pitched as the questions continue to spill out. “Does Wick know?”

 

“No,” Raven’s already saying, her hands muffling the words. “Well—yes—Wick knows. But it’s not since he came back. It was—before. Before Finn and the alliance and everything. It was just one time. And we didn’t even have sex. He just…”

 

This is completely and incredibly surreal, but Clarke can’t help the way she breathes out: “He just what?” She used to talk about crushes and love during sleepovers on the Ark, but Raven and Murphy? _Raven and Murphy?_

 

It comes out as a mumble. “He ate me out.” Clarke slaps her hands over her mouth and Raven pours herself another glass of wine. “That’s not even the _worst part_ , Clarke. It was _good._ Like, god _damn_ , he knew what he was _doing_.” She drains half the glass in one go.

 

“Raven. _Why._ ” Clarke reaches out her hand and covers Raven’s. “I’m not judging I’m just—confused. Very confused. He shot you and then you—“

 

“Exactly. He shot me.” Raven laughs. “He said he wanted to apologize and I felt shitty about my leg and…I let him.”

 

“Well,” Clarke says after a minute. “Did you accept his apology?”

 

Raven laughs again. “I did at the time, but then the grounders wanted Finn, so….” _I came because you asked me to_ , Murphy had said to Raven, and then— _Cold bitch_. Clarke stares down into her wine. _Huh._ “He seems alright now,” Raven continues. “It’s just awkward. Because of the whole—eating out thing.”

 

Clarke shrugs. “I wouldn’t worry about it. You and Bellamy are fine, now, after all, and you two _actually_ had sex.” She doesn’t mean anything by it, but Raven chokes on her wine, coughs before she is able to form a sentence.

 

“You know about that?”

 

She’s shocked, clearly, but also seems strangely apprehensive. Clarke frowns. “I thought everybody knew. It’s not like the tent walls were soundproof back then. I just heard it through gossip. Nobody has talked about it in a while though, if you’re worried about Wick finding out.”

 

Raven shakes her head. “No, no, it’s not that just—you know it was just that one time, right? And I didn’t ever like, _want_ anything with Bellamy. And he never tried to hook up with me again after that.”

 

With a confused little laugh, Clarke tilts her head at Raven. “Why are you explaining yourself to me?”

 

Raven tilts her head right back at Clarke, ponytail swaying with the movement, and her eyes dart from Clarke, to the bed behind her, and back to Clarke. “Aren’t you two…I mean…I thought you two were together, now.”

 

It takes a long moment for the sentiment to sink in, and Clarke is distracted for a moment when her mind goes to the press of Bellamy’s body against hers at night and how her heartbeat speeds up and her skin goes all tingly as her mind connects the dots Raven’s laid out instead of the reaction she knew she _should_ have—one of disbelief and surprise.

 

“Uh, no. It’s not like that. I’m not ready for that,” she stammers out, but the words seem to come automatically, ordered together without a spare thought. Finn’s face springs to her mind, but her heart doesn’t feel like it’s going to burst anymore, hasn’t for a while now, even though he passes through the back of her thoughts on nearly a daily basis.

 

Raven frowns at Clarke, repeats Clarke’s earlier move of reaching out and covering her hand. “I’m sorry. I guess that’s what they mean when ‘assumptions make an ass out of you and me.’”

 

Clarke shakes her head to clear it and covers Raven’s hand with her own, making a little stack of them on the table. “Don’t worry about it. I probably would have done the same.”

 

The plastic of the tent rustles as Bellamy ducks through the flap again. “Am I interrupting girl time?” he jokes. Clarke notes how he drops his hand on her shoulder as he walks behind her to his seat again, and she sees Raven’s eyes dart to the contact as well, how she subtly raises a brow, almost as if to herself, as she drops her eyes to her own glass.

 

“Absolutely not,” Raven drawls. “Join on in, Bellamy Blake.”

 

* * *

 

They’re reading in the low lamplight when they hear Miller and Monty start up next door. Low voices and chuckling broken by long moments of quiet. _Well,_ Clarke thinks, _it’s just because we can’t hear them kissing._ And sure enough, the silence ends with Monty laughing and Miller murmuring something back to him.

 

Bellamy sighs and dog ears _1984_. “I would be a lot happier for them if they weren’t so loud,” he grumbles, pushing his head into his pillow so he can look up over their heads and see where to set his book.

 

Clarke rolls her eyes and turns a page in her own novel. It’s the third book in some ridiculous series about teenagers in New York City and a secret blogger who tracks their moves, but she’s enjoying it. It’s mindless and easy, even without having read the first two books. She’s looked through the little library the Ark has assembled, but has yet to find them and thinks they’re lost forever, unless they come across a library or bookstore at some point. “They aren’t being that loud, actually,” she says, careful to keep her voice quiet so as to not alert the lovebirds next door. “That’s the problem with tents.”

 

Bellamy hums in agreement and rolls onto his side, props his head up on his hand. “Wow, you’re really plowing through yours.”

 

She cuts him a side glance and a bit of a smirk. “It’s an easy read. The furthest from Orwell that you could ever get.”

 

He grins down at her, teeth glinting in the low light. His hair is shiny, too; he’d washed it after Raven left, and scrubbed his face and the back of his neck, and then he’d stripped off his shirt to get under his arms and Clarke had ducked out of the tent for some air. By the time she’d come back, he’d changed into his loose cotton pants, so – (Clarke jerks herself back to the present before she lets herself think about what else he’d washed while she was out).

 

There’s a groan from next door, muffled and quiet, but still there, and Clarke drops her book on her chest and presses her index finger to her lips, ordering Bellamy to be quiet. He falls forward, half onto her, and buries his own groan into the pillow under her head. Clarke shakes with silent laughter, hand clapped over her mouth, and tries to take deep breaths to calm herself down.

 

“This is terrible,” she whispers into Bellamy’s pine-y fresh hair. “And they’re _trying_ to be quiet.”

 

Bellamy pushes himself back up onto his elbow and peers across the tent, drums his fingers where they rest on her stomach. “What if we layered hides over the tent forms?”

 

“What if we just built normal cabins?” Clarke rebuts. “That would solve a lot of these problems. Including the exposure issue. We can’t do another winter like this.”

 

“Agreed.” Bellamy goes from drumming his fingers to absentmindedly running his thumb back and forth, back and forth from its socket. It doesn’t matter that his hand is outside the covers, Clarke can feel it as though it were against her skin and she fights against the urge to close her eyes and wholly enjoy that tiny, singular, repetitive motion. “We don’t have the space inside the Camp, though.”

 

 _Logistics. Yes_. Clarke can handle that. “We’re at peace for now. Couldn’t we shut down the fence long enough to expand the border of the camp before we start building? Or we could turn some of the tents into dorms to make space.”

 

“Or we could build outside of camp and re-enclose it when everything is finished,” Bellamy offers. Then he heaves a sigh and shakes his head. “The other Councillors won’t like it. They don’t think the other kids are mature enough to be living independently. I have to fight tooth and nail almost every session to keep them from moving them back inside the Ark itself for ‘safety,’ never mind the fact the kids all say it would be like being stuck back in Mount Weather again.”

 

 _The kids_. Clarke runs her eyes over Bellamy’s profile, lit up in the soft lamp light. She can see the hint of his stubble, the faint lines settling in at the corners of his eyes, the way his face has shed all baby fat, unlike the slightest bit of her own that she knows still rests at the highest point of her own cheekbones. “How old are you, exactly?”

 

He glances down at her and furrows his brow, slightly confused as to where the question came from. His eyes dip down to her mouth when she licks her lips to ease where they’re chapped in one corner, but then they linger there for a beat longer than necessary and Clarke’s breath catches in her throat. “Twenty-three,” he finally replies, after he pulls his gaze back up to hers. “Twenty-four in the summer.”

 

 _A man grown._ She can’t handle his hand on her stomach anymore, making her breath tight and her stomach go all molten, so she turns towards him on her side, and he drops back off his elbow to mirror her, back on his own side of the bed.

 

“I turned eighteen after the dropship landed,” she tells him, answering his question before he can ask.

 

“You did? Why didn’t you say?”

 

Clarke raises an eyebrow at him. “Say what, exactly? ‘Let’s pause this war so I can have some birthday cake?’” He doesn’t seem satisfied, but she shrugs. “We had more important things to do.”

 

A moan from next door cuts off whatever his response was to be. “Cabins,” Bellamy sighs, and reaches up over their heads to turn out the lamp.

 

* * *

 

He’s wrapped around her in the morning, arm curled around her waist and breath coming deep and slow against the nape of her neck. Her stomach does a flip when she feels his length lying long and hard against the small of her back.

 

Bellamy shifts against her; his arm twitches where it rests in the curve of her waist. He mumbles a bit against her ear, something about breakfast and guard rounds; he’s waking up, slowly but surely. Something about his rising awareness makes the decision for Clarke, as she remembers the slow blink of his brown eyes in the lamplight the night before, the way they twitched down to her mouth when she’d mentioned their age difference.

 

Instead of rolling out of bed as she normally does when she remembers that Bellamy’s cock against her ass means that he’s a _man_ , she rocks back into the cradle of his hips, enjoys the thrill that runs down her spine when he grunts a bit into her ear. It’s a huff, really—a huff of warm air on top of the warm embrace he holds her in under their warm blankets, and she does it again, feels the jump of his length against her back and the way his whole body jolts to awareness now.

 

He feels it that time, grabs her hip to hold her fast and breathes her name into her hair. There it is—the pang of desire down low between her legs, and she can’t help the arch of her back and the sigh she lets slip from her throat.

 

When she looks back over her shoulder, Bellamy’s eyes are sharper than she’s come to expect from the months of waking up with him in the morning. “Clarke,” he murmurs again, but it’s less of a question, this time what with how she shifts onto her back and lifts a hand to set the tip of her pinkie into the dimple of his chin.

 

Bellamy kisses her, then, sure and firm and honest, his hand leaving her waist to drag his fingertips along her jawline. His lips are soft, his tongue gentle, his skin warm when she slips her fingers up under the edge of his t-shirt’s shirt sleeve to dip them into the shallow troughs between the cords of his bicep and tricep. For a long, wonderful moment, Clarke revels in the comforting weight of Bellamy’s arm across her chest and the quiet sounds of their mouths meeting, parting, and meeting again, slow and sweet in the early morning.

 

But then Bellamy makes this—this _noise_ —this half-sigh, half-groan against her mouth before he sucks her lower lip into his mouth and slides his tongue across it. It’s a slither of wet heat against her lip that snakes down Clarke’s spine in a heartbeat to coil low in her belly. She gasps, fingers curling into his arm, and Bellamy flicks his tongue against the roof of her mouth as it falls open. She tastes the salt of his upper lip when she laps at it, shivers at slide of his hand down her neck. The heat between her legs flares and Clarke wrenches herself away, shoving Bellamy’s arm off and swinging her feet off the bed.

 

She nearly trips over her own bare feet as she heads to the basin of water they keep for washing their face and hands. “I’m sorry—Clarke—Clarke—I’m sorry,” Bellamy’s stammering behind her. Another apology gets lost in the sound of Clarke plunging her hands into the ice-cold water and splashing it on her face. The chill is immediate, chasing away the blush that had been rising across her chest and face. One more splash and even the heat between her legs is gone, but the memory of it remains when she turns around and sees Bellamy sitting up in bed, hair sticking up everywhere and t-shirt twisted from sleep, but his mouth is a bit swollen and his eyes are still bright with desire.

 

It’s his stricken expression that strikes her in the gut, though. “No, it’s my fault,” Clarke assures him, pushing her hair behind her ears. “I shouldn’t have—That wasn’t a good idea.” He closes his mouth, presses his lips together and tosses the blankets back. _He’s still hard_ , Clarke notices and she’s unable to pull her gaze from his lap for the few seconds it takes for him to shift to the edge of the mattress and stand up. Her heart stutters and her stomach does that fluttery thing. _Clothes. I need to get dressed._

 

“Clarke—“

 

“My shift goes until lunch today,” Clarke cuts him off, shimmying into some cargo pants and buttoning them at her waist. “And then I’ll probably go see Raven for a bit after that.” Bellamy watches her shrug into a sweater and his face is so anguished and apprehensive that Clarke makes herself stop and look him in the eye. “Bellamy, it’s fine, I promise. I just don’t want to talk about it, okay? We should just—just pretend it didn’t happen, okay?”

 

His eyebrows draw together at that, and the corners of his mouth turn down, but Clarke doesn’t let herself ask him what he’s thinking. If she stays, she doesn’t know what she’ll do. She whirls on her boot heel and flees the tent, all but running to the sterile safety of medical.

 

* * *

 

Bellamy whips his shirt over his head and throws it onto the bed. He _knows_ he wasn’t misreading her. Not with how she’s been looking at him recently, not with the way she’d reached out for him first. He’d been so careful to not push her, no matter the way he’d hear her breath hitch or feel her body turn in towards his any time he was around. Body and mind are two very different things, and they had been in perfect sync just now until something had changed and sent Clarke reeling away from him.

 

Annoyed and frustrated, Bellamy shoves his feet into his boots and laces them up with sharp yanks. _One step forward and two steps back_.

 

Luckily, he’s so busy that he can distract himself from the memory of her arched back and soft skin. He runs into a group of the kids at breakfast and floats the idea of the cabins. They’re ecstatic and want to know when they can start. “I’m tired of the seams coming apart,” Rebecca says. “I want to like, go to sleep and not wake up with an unexpected mountain view.”

 

“We’ll have to wait for the ground to thaw,” he cautions them, but it does little good. They’re already chattering amongst themselves about real walls and windows and roofs, so he leaves them be with their excitement.

 

The air is starting to warm, and they haven’t had a true snowfall in at least a week or two, but it’s still chilly enough for Bellamy to shove his hands into his pockets and quicken his pace across camp. He clangs up the ramp to the Council chamber, which is just as cold as outside, but without the biting wind, and gives his morning greetings to councilors and Chancellor Griffin.

 

They are, of course, less enthused about the idea of permanent structures.

 

“I don’t think you’ve really thought through how much man power it would take, and how exposed it would leave us in the process,” Chancellor Griffin admonishes. Bellamy wishes, not for the first time, that she weren’t Clarke’s mom. It would make disagreeing with her a lot easier.

 

“We have a defensive alliance and we’re at peace for the time being,” Bellamy shoots back. “The only thing we’re in danger of at the moment is freezing to death next winter or starving to death before the crops grow in this summer.”

 

Kane seems cautiously optimistic, but: “I don’t think it’s a bad idea, Bellamy. Still, it’s a pretty massive undertaking, to build cabins for three-hundred-plus people.”

 

With a scoff, Bellamy shakes his head. “I’m not talking about cabins for the whole camp. I’m here to represent and take charge of my group; what you all decide to do for yours is up to you.”

 

“ _Permanently_ separate the forty-four from the rest of the Ark?” Chancellor Griffin shakes her head. “No. I’m sorry, but no. We’ve dealt with your interference with Council matters up until now, we’ve given the kids time to rest after Mount Weather, but it’s time for your private meetings to stop and for the forty-four to re-integrate into the Ark population.”

 

Bellamy fights the urge to bang his head on the table. “With all due respect, they don’t want that.”

 

“It’s not about what they _want_ ,” Councilor Bort interjects. “It’s about upholding the authority of the Ark Council.”

 

Bellamy shoots him a glare. “Don’t even get me started on Council authority,” he grits out. “Because the last time I checked, no one _voted_ for Chancellor Griffin, and the Ark Constitution states that the Council is a ‘temporary government’ until the exodus back to Earth. Well—we’re back on Earth, Councilors. And you--” he gestures at Councilor Bort “—you’re the Councilor from Factory Station, which crashed and wiped out ninety percent of your own electorate. And I’m being polite using that term, because I’m one of the forty-six percent of Factory Station that _didn’t_ vote for you. At least I’ve got forty-plus people that I _know_ I’m representing every time I walk through those doors.”

 

Silence reigns in the Council chambers for a long moment. Chancellor Griffin stares him down from across the table, and Bellamy recognizes the stubborn set of her jaw that he sees so often in Clarke. He likes the Chancellor, he _does_ , because she wants to keep everyone safe, but she’s wrong here, and Bellamy won’t give an inch just because she’s a first-class doctor and has a better-than-average moral compass.

 

“I know you want to think they’re just kids,” he says, addressing the room at large but talking directly to Chancellor Griffin. “But we survived on the ground for a month, fought off a grounder army on our own, and they came together as a group and busted their asses inside the Mountain to help us win the war. They’re young, but they’re smart, and they know what they want. And they want to build some cabins. You all should think about doing the same. We need to stop living in tents and wreckage like this is all temporary.”

 

No one stops him when he leaves. He’s won a battle, and a big one, but he knows it’s just another in the string of many. He knows from history that establishments never go down easy.

 

Octavia is waiting in his tent when he gets back, wraps him in a huge hug and clings tight for a long time. She’s so lean and firm, now, and her hands are calloused from handling swords and arrows. Indra’s given her leave to come see her _skaikru_ brother, she tells him with a grin as she drops down into one of the chairs.

 

She’s learning battle strategy and tracking, archery as well as swordplay. One of the other seconds uses a longaxe, and she wants to learn that next. She pulls up her sleeves and proudly shows him the scars littering her forearms and hands, tells him the story of each and every one. Bellamy’s proud of her, but part of him still wants to wrap her up in a blanket and sneak her away to the mountains to somewhere she won’t ever get hurt again.

 

“You’re ridiculous,” she laughs when he tells her this. “As if you’d get ten feet before I’d clock you over the head.”

 

He reaches out and arm, snatches a pillow from the bed, and tosses it at her face. “Maybe I’d surprise you.”

 

Octavia catches the pillow and spins it in her hands. “Speaking of surprises…” she jerks her head at the bed, “this is still going on? Are you two still pretending you’re just keeping each other warm? That excuse won’t hold up into spring, you know.”

 

The look she shoots him is humorous, congenial, but Bellamy can’t help the face he pulls. “Of course you would bring that up today,” he mutters, half to himself.

 

“What? What happened?”

 

The other Arkers simply don’t understand the confidentiality that comes with being a sibling, and Bellamy doesn’t really think twice about recounting the events of the early morning to her. The more specific details he keeps vague, of course, but he sets his elbows on the table and gives her the broad outlines. Octavia’s face goes from intrigued to faux-scandalized, to excited, to confused, to sadness tinged with sympathy.

 

“I was just following her lead,” Bellamy says in conclusion. “I just don’t know—what happened.”

 

Without her warpaint, Octavia’s face looks as soft and sweet as it had back on the Ark, even as tanned from the winter sun as it is. “Bell,” she breathes. “Clarke is scared. She’s afraid. We both know Clarke. She is the _queen_ of compartmentalization. She probably started feeling something she wasn’t ready to deal with and—“ Octavia makes a shoving motion with her hands “—shut it down.”

 

 _Feeling something?_ Bellamy opens his mouth to ask her what she means, but a horn sounds from across camp and Octavia jumps to her feet. “Gotta run, big brother,” she rattles off, throwing her sword across her back and kissing the top of his head. “Be nice!”

 

“I’m always nice,” he shouts after her, but her twinkling laugh is all that answers him as she leaves.

 

 _Scared, huh?_ With a sigh, Bellamy pushes himself to his feet and starts to straighten up the table and chairs and organize the chaos stretching across the table’s surface. He’d thought Clarke had been doing better over the past few months—laughing more, smiling more, talking more. It’s why he’d finally given in and kissed her, after all. She’d seemed like she was finally making peace with what had happened and was starting to turn outwards again.

 

And “felt something”—he doesn’t know what to make of that. She’d pulled him closer, after all, hadn’t she? And then arched up into him with a gasp when he’d deepened the kiss?

 

Bellamy freezes in the middle of the tent, hands grasping the pillow Octavia had left on her chair. _Fuck_. That had been it, hadn’t it? She’d freaked out right after that—right after they’d shifted from chaste and slow to something a bit more desperate and primal.

 

_Queen of compartmentalization._

 

Bellamy drops the pillow onto the bed with a huff. _Everything I touch dies_ , she’d told him after all.

 

By the time Clarke finishes her shift, disappears into mechanical for the afternoon, and returns to the tent that night, she seems to have balanced her keel. She gives him a small smile when she ducks through the tent flap, blonde hair shimmering in the low firelight, and goes out of her way to clear away his plate for him after dinner, all while saying as little as possible.

 

He goes to bed first as usual, gives her his back while she changes. But when she crawls in next to him, Bellamy turns back to face her, runs his eyes over the little line of worry between her eyebrows. She puts a hand under her cheek and looks back at him, pressing her lips together the way she does when she’s got ten thousand conflicting thoughts running through her mind.

 

“You can move out if you want,” Bellamy finally says. He works to keep it quiet (they can hear Monty and Jasper next door) and doesn’t miss how her eyelids flutter at the roughness of it.

 

“I don’t want to,” she whispers back, eyes shining bright blue in the lamplight.

 

His chest tightens at her earnest expression and the corner of his mouth pulls up in a half-smile. “You gotta say something sometime, Clarke. Please, talk to me.”

 

She exhales heavily through her nose; her eyelashes flutter before she begins. “Before Mount Weather, I told Lexa that maybe we deserved to do more than just survive. I still believe that. But sometimes, when I’m with you, I feel so…” she trails off for a moment and pulls her eyes from his. “…content, and safe, and happy, and then I start to _want_.” Pink tinges her cheeks, and Bellamy knows exactly what she’s talking about. But her voice is shaky, and she still won’t meet his eyes, so he slips his hand under hers and lets her fingers fall into the spaces between his own until their knuckles catch against each other in a loose-knit lace. “I feel guilty. I feel like I shouldn’t want those things, that certainly I shouldn’t have them. Not after everything I’ve done.”

 

Bellamy’s chest tightens again, but for a completely different reason this time. “You deserve it Clarke. You do, I promise. And if you need forgiveness, I’ll give that to you. I forgive you, alright? I forgive you. But please—please don’t shut yourself away because you think it’s what you deserve.”

 

Her chin trembles and when she blinks, a tear slips out of her eye, slides over the bridge of her nose and drops onto her pillow. Bellamy leans forward before he can stop himself and kisses the salt-wet spot on her narrow nose, and then she’s tilting her face up and pressing her mouth to his. It’s slightly off-center, and closed-mouthed, and she shakes once with a silent sob before she pulls back and wipes at her eyes.

 

“If you need time—“ Bellamy starts, settling his hand on her arm and rubbing his thumb in soothing circles, but she shakes her head and ducks forward to kiss him again. This time it’s longer, and wetter, but she keeps it slow and chaste and Bellamy follows her lead.

 

“I just need to go slow,” Clarke murmurs. She lifts a finger and runs it along his cheekbone; Bellamy nods and kisses the back of her hand when it falls onto the pillow in front of his face.

 

She gives a little amused huff when he nudges her nose with his and her mouth opens sweetly under his own coaxing and searching one. “But you’re okay with this?” he asks against her lips, careful to keep his hand on her arm and their kiss brief. She hums in assent, giving his elbow a little squeeze. “Okay. Then we’ll just do this.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note bene: Clarke accepts Bellamy's apology here because, if you remember, this fic is *technically* canon divergent from 2x14, "Bodyguard of Lies." They didn't irradiate Mount Weather in this fic, so there's not quite as much resting on her shoulders, though she's obviously struggling what she had to do even before the Battle for Mount Weather.
> 
> One more chapter left!


	4. Chapter 4

Bellamy’s kisses are sweetest in the mornings.

 

The sun starts rising earlier and earlier, washing their tent with grey light long before either of them is ready to awaken. Crawling out from under the blankets into the chilly air is the last thing Clarke wants to do most mornings, and she nearly always grumpily pulls the blankets up to her chin until Bellamy pulls them away so he can sweep his lips along the soft skin underneath. His warm hands trace circles around her navel or walk along her side as he encourages her into the land of the living with his mouth.

 

Clarke thinks she laughs and smiles more in those few weeks than in the whole time since they’ve been on Earth, and its all thanks to Bellamy’s teasing tongue and fingers and the chuckles he muffles against her neck. She’s not complaining, either. It puts them both into a good mood before work—her to medical and him to his rounds and the Council.

 

And once the snow melts and the ground starts to thaw, Bellamy adds “construction foreman” to his list of daily jobs.

 

Before breakfast one morning, he takes her through the gate and out to the grassy plain, nearly to the tree line, and walks it out for her. Long, one-room cabins with fireplaces; ample space around each for gardens or later additions; a large community cabin at the end of the main boulevard for meetings; guard towers at each corner; a medical cabin; and a storehouse for provisions. “What do you think?” Bellamy asks her when he’s done, setting his hands on his hips as he walks back from where he’s toed-out the main gate in the dewy grass.

 

Clarke shrugs and gives him an encouraging smile. “I think it’s going to look great.”

 

“No, I mean—“ Bellamy runs his fingers through his hair and stares out across his imaginary village. “Do you think I’m missing anything? Do you think the layout should be different?”

 

It’s hard to build a village up from a flat pasture using only imagination, but Clarke tries anyway. “Well. We’re going to have our own generator for the fence, right? So we need a cabin to store it in. And you might as well add some working space for Monty or whoever is going to be working on it and whatever else mechanical stuff we need done.” Bellamy nods and she can see the wheels turning in his mind as his eyes dart about on the field, rearranging and widening his plan. “I think we need a community garden for big sprawling plants that would just…take over the space outside of the cabins. Monty could tell you way more about that than I could, though. And you haven’t put in a smoke house or a storage cabin for seasonal things like extra hides or tarps.”

 

She’s spilling out the words by the end. When she realizes, she snaps her jaw shut, because Bellamy’s plan really is good, and she doesn’t want him to think otherwise. But he’s nodding along, eyes narrowed at the field, and he makes a pushing motion with his hand. “So we shove that far wall back a good, what, forty feet, you think? That should give us some growing room, too. Unless you think it might be too much wire—“

 

Clarke shakes her head. “We’ve got whole sections of the Ark over there that aren’t useable for one reason or another, and Raven’s been itching for the weather to change so her hip isn’t so sore and she can crawl around. She’s been obsessing over the schematics of Alpha station for weeks now, circling junction boxes and all sorts of stuff she wants to go collect. There’s no telling how much yards of wire are in the walls, when you think about it. And we can go over to the other crash sites and cannibalize those sections, too. The fence won’t be a problem, as long as the generator can carry the load to keep it hot.”

 

The sun has cleared the treetops now, chasing away the low-lying fog, and Bellamy’s eyes twinkle as he walks over to sling his arm around her shoulders and tug her back towards camp. “See, Clarke? This is what I keep you around for—your brains.”

 

* * *

 

This time around, Bellamy doesn’t have to threaten the kids to get them to work. All he asks for is for the over-fourteeners to help out between their shifts, as long as they feel able, and they show up in droves, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. Clarke heaves a sigh of relief when Captain Miller and some of his guard members assist in the tree felling at the beginning. After Mount Weather, she’d thrown herself into work at medical, but now she’s come to relish her slower days and the time to herself, and she’s glad to know that “trees falling on heads” isn’t a medical emergency she’s going to have to deal with.

 

Injuries are guaranteed with construction, though, and it’s Monty that’s the first man down with something more serious than a splinter or a scrape. To head off any mechanical glitches, Bellamy gets the generator storage cabin completed first, and somewhere in the process of installing the machinery, something big and heavy ends up dropped on top of Monty’s foot. When Wick piggy-backs him into medical, he’s still in shock, but Jackson has to cut his boot and sock away because of how badly his foot has already swelled up.

 

“He was going to hook up the generator today for Bellamy,” Wick tells Clarke, voice low, while Jackson palpates Monty’s black and blue foot. The touch breaks the effect of his shock. Monty jerks and shouts; Raven grabs his hand and soothingly rubs his shoulder.

 

Jackson motions for Wick to bring over some moonshine from the side table. “Can you help hold him down? I don’t want him to twist and put something else out of place.”

 

Mount Weather has an X-ray machine, but they don’t need it to know that Monty’s broken his foot in several places. Clarke holds his ankle and heel in place while Jackson straightens and sets the bones he can get to through the inflamed tissue. The rest will have to wait until the swelling goes down. To his credit, Monty doesn’t start crying until the second bone. Raven strokes his arm and hair, peppers kisses along his forehead, and Wick tells him over and over that this kind of stuff happens to the best of them.

 

“We’ll take him to the Mountain in a week and see how it’s healing,” Jackson says.

 

Raven nods and starts to rise up from where she’s been sitting at Monty’s side. “Someone should tell Bellamy that generator isn’t happening today.”

 

“No, you stay here with Monty. You make a good nurse.” Clarke drops one hand on Raven’s back and pats Monty’s knee with her other hand with a small smile. “I’ll go find Bellamy. And Wick, would you look over the generator and make sure it’s all still good to go after being dropped?”

 

Wick snaps to it, leaving Monty with a solid squeeze on his shoulder. “I heard the boys were chopping firewood today, Clarke,” he tells her with a wink and an eyebrow waggle. When Clarke drops her eyes and feels her cheeks heat up, he snickers even as Raven hisses at him.

 

(Wick had burst into their tent during lunch a week or so before and found Clarke perched on Bellamy’s knees with one of his hands up the back of her shirt. Instead of jumping away, Clarke had surprised herself by burying her face in Bellamy’s neck while Wick delivered his message. _Alright, alright, now get out!_ Bellamy had half-shouted, half-laughed, hand cuffed around the back of Clarke’s neck. Wick had chuckled and sing-songed, _Raven’s gonna be so pissed I saw it first,_ on his way out.)

 

Raven takes pity on Clarke and jerks her chin at Wick. “How come I never get to oogle _you_ chopping firewood, huh, Kyle?”

 

Spinning on his heel to walk backwards, Wick lifts his hands into the air. “And risk these babies? Even Mount Weather couldn’t afford their insurance payout,” he calls back. Raven rolls her eyes, but even Monty gives a little chuckle from the bed.

 

Leaving medical with a promise to check back in on Monty at dinner, Clarke follows the path through the maze of tents toward the little clearing where the guys split firewood. _Cracks_ and _thunks_ fill the air, and she can hear familiar joking and laughing. Once she steps into the clearing, she looks for Bellamy and what she sees makes her mouth go dry.

 

Because he’s shirtless _and_ sweaty with his back to her, and because it’s _just_ her luck, she’s found him right as he swings his axe up and over his head. The bright sun and the sheen of sweat on his skin accentuate the extension and flexion of his muscles as he hauls the axe downward and splits the wood in a single blow. Miller jerks his chin at him; Bellamy looks over his shoulder, drops the axe on its head, and turns to walk over to her. There’s sweat running down his chest and stomach and Clarke yanks her eyes from where the vee of his pelvis disappears into his cargo pants.

 

“Hey.” He wipes his forehead with his forearm and drops his hand to rest on his hip. “What’s up?”

 

A bead of sweat drips from the corner of his jaw and glides down his neck. Clarke’s words catch in her throat until he shifts his weight and says her name. She clears her throat.  “The generator isn’t happening today. Miller,” Clarke calls out, and waits for Monty’s boyfriend to make his way over to them. “Monty’s in medical. Some equipment was dropped on his foot and it’s broken pretty badly. He’ll have to be off of it for a while.”

 

Miller has always struck Clarke as a _still waters run deep_ kind of guy, even counting the times she’s seen him ready for battle, or drunk at a party. But she’s never seen his eyes widen in startled fright or his mouth tighten with anxiety the way they do now. “He’s fine,” Clarke reassures him quickly. “We’ve set the bones and Raven’s sitting with him now.” It’s no use though; Miller’s off and running towards medical like hellhounds are on his tail.

 

“He’s going be alright, though, right?” Bellamy asks, drawing her attention back to him. “You know—his foot. Is it going to heal back correctly?”

 

Clarke nods, then shrugs. “I think it will.” The muscle in Bellamy’s jaw jumps at that. He rolls his shoulder, reaches his arm across his chest and hooks his other elbow around it to stretch out his trapezius. He’s oblivious to how the motion pulls his intercostals out from where they’d been hiding until he’d turned into the stretch. Clarke wants to press her fingers between them. “Uh. I—We—Jackson set what we could but there’s some—swelling. We’re waiting for that to go down before we’ll know for sure.”

 

He swings his arms back, interlaces his fingers behind his sacrum, and rolls his head on his neck. His chest opens wide with the stretch; Clarke can see where the sparse hair on his chest has gone damp and shiny with perspiration. Her eyes drop lower, to the line trailing down from his navel, sees how it thickens right where it disappears into his low-slung cargo pants, stretched out from days and days of wear. “Clarke.”

 

Bellamy’s brow is furrowed when her eyes snap back to his face. “Uh. What. What’s up?” She gives him a bright smile, but he only tilts his head at her, searches her expression with concerned eyes.

 

“I was asking if you knew if the generator was going to be behind schedule.”

 

She turns her face away, peering at the mountains beyond camp instead of at his (tan, sweaty, freckled) face. “Nope. Wick’s gonna take care of it tomorrow.”

 

“Alright,” he says, but she’s already saying goodbye and turning on her heel to leave. He calls out her name, but she only increases her pace. She has to get away from him and get herself under control.

 

Their tent is a blissfully cool respite from the sun; Clarke strips out of her jacket and pulls off her outer tee before she braces her hands on the back of a chair and takes a deep breath. Has he always been that toned? He has to have been. The tent has always just been too dim at night for her to see more than the basic musculature of his form. Clarke lets her mind slip into formal medical terms to help calm her down, but she doesn’t get far at all before she hears Bellamy call out her name as he pushes into the tent.

 

“Clarke, are you alright?” He sounds concerned. “Do you need some water? You seemed a bit out of it just now.”

 

She turns on his heel and her response dies on her lips because he’s put on a white tank top that sticks _obscenely_ to his skin, already damp in spots. She already hates this shirt when he’s clean and dry because it cuts low over his chest, but now he’s dirty and sweaty and something in her snaps and it takes Clarke two steps before she’s wrapping a hand around his neck and pulling him down for a kiss.

 

Her fingers slip on his skin so she grabs onto his damp hair instead and Bellamy grunts into her mouth in surprise, hands bracketing her hips. Clarke skims her other hand up under his shirt and along his side and copies the move that had her fleeing the tent the first time they kissed: sucking on his lower lip and fluttering her tongue against the back of his teeth. “Take this off again,” she mutters against his lips, already shoving his shirt up his torso, and he doesn’t hesitate in following her order.

 

She dances her tongue on his sternum and he groans, captures her face in his hands and pulls her away to look her in the eye. Clarke has no idea what she looks like but whatever it is has his pupils dilating and his breath speeding up. “You alright?” he rumbles once more, but meaning something else entirely now, and when Clarke breathes _yes_ , he bends down and kisses her roughly, tongue sliding into her mouth. She shudders against him and curls her fingers into the dense muscle of his shoulders; when one of his hands palms a breast, her knees tremble and he walks her backwards until her back bumps into the table and she can lean back and let him yank off her undershirt.

 

“If you wanted me shirtless and dirty, all you had to do was ask,” Bellamy mutters into her ear before he tugs on the lobe with his teeth and plucks at her nipple with deft fingers. Clarke’s eyes roll back and she drags her nails down his chest, relishes the groan he muffles against her neck. “And here I’ve been washing every other day for you.”

 

“I was just surprised, is all,” Clarke breathes in between the kisses she sucks along his collarbone, lapping up the traces of salt she finds there. With the incidental twist of her hips she gives to get to the other side, she ends up with one of Bellamy’s thighs between her own and the pressure and friction of it sends a frission of pleasure up from her center along her spine and exits her body as a full-bodied moan she can’t stifle in the slightest because she hadn’t been expecting it.

 

Bellamy hushes her, slants his mouth across hers, but he curses beautifully when Clarke’s hips jump against his thigh and she gasps into his mouth and shivers against him. “That’s what you need, huh?” he breathes, and Clarke feels him wrap an arm around her waist and then she’s able to get herself lined up on top of the line of his thigh.

 

“Bellamy,” she sighs, drawing out the last syllable. His arm flexes, helps her roll up onto her toes and back down again, and she wraps her arms around his neck and kisses him with wild, sloppy abandon while she fucks herself on his leg. It’s been so long since she’s touched herself, and she’s making all sorts of breathy, squeaky noises.

 

It all makes his cock twitch against the curve of her hip, and he’s getting something out of it, too, because eventually he grunts into her mouth and hitches her up his body. A moment later, everything goes sideways as they tumble onto the bed and Bellamy’s fingers press at her through the threadbare material of her cargo pants before he tugs at the button and zipper. “Let me,” he mutters against her mouth, as if Clarke would do anything else but lift her hips to help him shove her pants down to her knees.

 

The first touch of his fingers to her folds has her shivering; he drops his mouth to her breast and she arches back, pressing her head into the blankets and biting her lip to keep quiet. He twists his wrist, sliding his fingers in to the last knuckle while his calloused thumb attends to her clit with quick and ruthless movements. Every muscle in her body coils around his hand, and the anticipation crawls up her back as he spirits her towards her peak at a breathtaking sprint. Clarke comes with a shuddering, startled inhale and Bellamy’s forehead pressed to her temple, nuzzling her cheek while she shivers over and over again, knees curling up and neck arching towards the ceiling. Even when the tremors have left her body, she relishes in the afterglow of a long-overdue and phenomenal orgasm—all languid limbs and satisfied sighs.

 

“I’ll go slower next time,” Bellamy promises, pulling his hand away. “But I think you needed that.” He pops his fingers into his mouth, grins wickedly around them when he catches Clarke watching him with glazed-over eyes.

 

She runs her fingers through the messy curls that make up his forelock, sends them to the back of his head so she can guide his mouth to hers. The camp outside the tent continues about its business, shouting and stomping and calling out, unaware that Clarke and Bellamy lie half-dressed and askew across their bed. She trails her fingers down his chest, hums teasingly against his mouth when his abs ripple and he huffs through his nose. His fingers tangle with hers at his waist; together they fumble his belt and pants open and Bellamy breaks away from her mouth to let out a strangled groan when her fingers beat his to his cock.

 

He’s thicker than Finn was and curves the slightest bit to the left. The curse Bellamy lets out is far fouler and more sacrilegious than what Finn had muttered in the bunker that night. Something about it makes Clarke giggle. She kisses Bellamy again to reassure him that it’s _with_ him, not _at_ him. But he’s grinning against her mouth, too, covering her hand with his to and urging her tighten her fingers and quicken her strokes. His pubic hair brushes crisply against the edge of her palm and pinky finger with every down stroke, and she breaks away from the kiss to look down his body to where their hands work in tandem and see if his hair is curly _everywhere_. (it is.)

 

Something about the him watching her watching _them_ undoes Bellamy and, not ungently, he moves her hand away from his length. “Later,” he says, when she glances at him with a half-confused, half-offended expression. “When we’re not missing in action.”

 

Bellamy starts to pump his hand with practiced efficiency and rolls to rest fully on his back; Clarke goes with him and strokes her fingers across the thin skin that stretches over his hip. “What do you need me to do?” she murmurs against his shoulder.

 

He’s already clenching his jaw; fluttering his eyes closed. “Keep doing that,” he sighs, and groans when Clarke gives a little nip to his deltoid and smooths the flat of her palm down his thigh and lets her nails give the _slightest_ drag on their way back up. Bellamy gasps out a curse, then her name, and she feels his free hand tangle in her hair when she swirls her tongue over his nipple. “Clarke—“ even in the low light of the tent, his dark eyes still shine bright. “—kiss me, please, kiss—“

 

Her tongue slides easily between his open lips, wet from where he’d been licking them, and he leans up off the blankets to give as good as he’s getting. Even so, it’s sloppy and messy and their teeth clink at least once, but he gives the most _beautiful_ moan into her mouth before she feels his body jerk with his release. And when he sags back onto the blanket with closed eyes and heavy breaths, Clarke looks down at him and thinks he looks five years younger without that crease across his forehead.

 

Bellamy’s hand strokes aimlessly up and down her back, dipping into the line of her spine or tracing around her scapula or across the plane of her sacrum in nonsensical patterns. Clarke props her head on her hand and taps her fingers across his clavicle while her eyes trace constellations in the freckles on his face. The pounding of his heart slows down over those minutes, returning to its normal rhythm, and the slow rise and fall of Bellamy’s chest lifts Clarke, too, where she’s half-draped across him.

 

He finally opens his eyes and rolls his head to meet her gaze. The light tracing of his fingers turns into a broad swipe of his flat palm that comes to rest low on her back. “That was okay, right?” His eyebrows are pulled together again, so Clarke gives him a small smile and lifts her hand to stroke her finger between them until his forehead relaxes again.

 

“Strangely, it was perfect.” Bellamy scoffs and rolls his eyes. Clarke gives his chest a light swat and drops her elbow so she can rest her head on his shoulder. “I mean it. It’s not just that I needed it—I wanted it. And I think that’s the important part. For me, at least.”

 

Bellamy’s arm tightens around her back, pulls her in closer, and he turns his head to kiss her forehead. “Me too,” he rumbles.

 

Clarke wants to stay there for hours, wrapped up in Bellamy’s warm and solid arms and ignoring everyone else, but they don’t yet live in a world in which that’s possible. So she presses a kiss to his chest as she pushes herself up onto her hands and shivers when he traces his fingers down her spine one last time before he lets his arm drop away.

 

They dress quickly, shimmying their pants over their hips and their shirts over their heads, and Clarke pulls Bellamy close with a hand around the back of his neck for a long, searching kiss before they go their separate ways for the rest of the day.

 

Later that night, though, after a dinner full of held gazes and brushing fingers, Bellamy lowers her onto their bed and keeps his promise.

 

He goes slow.

 

* * *

The spring rains come with gale force winds, but still they push forward with the delinquent’s camp. It’s encouraging to Bellamy on his worst days to see all of the kids turned out with their jaws set, ready to get this wall up, or that door framed out, or this hearth and chimney built. With the scraping out of necrotic tissue and the need to keep his wounds open and draining, Murphy’s arm isn’t up to heavy lifting. Still, he has a canny eye for detail, and Bellamy relies on him to correct their angles on the rooflines. _He needs to feel important, needed_ , Clarke had reminded Bellamy when Murphy was cleared for work, and Bellamy had half a mind to tell him to fuck right off. _It’s why he left with Jaha in the first place_.

 

Up goes the community cabin, and the smoke house, and then the living cabins, one right after another along the central aisle that had started as shin-high grass, then to a well-trodden furrow, and finally to a packed-dirt street. Bellamy politics with the council during the morning and directs the construction in the afternoon; some nights he nearly falls asleep in his dinner bowl. Clarke guides him to bed with gentle prodding those nights and he barely registers how she yanks on his boots and belt before sleep overtakes him.

 

Other nights, though, he catches a second wind and he and Clarke fall onto the bed with an entirely different purpose. She drifts her fingers down his chest, cards them through his hair, dips them under the waistband of his boxers, learning every inch of him with whispers and sighs. And he nuzzles the sensitive undersides of her breasts, the creases of her hips, the soft skin of her inner thighs. In the dark tent, she shudders when he touches his tongue to her; he groans when she lets her hair trail down his belly after her lips. When he’s finally, _finally_ inside of her, she makes this little stutter-gasp of pleasure from underneath him, and he thinks it’s his favorite Clarke sound thus far no matter how many times he hears it.

 

She likes to drape herself over him afterwards, her head pillowed on his shoulder and her knee hooked around his. Tonight, she walks her fingers back and forth across his chest, light, stair-stepping taps along his clavicle and across his sternum. “The roof goes onto our cabin tomorrow,” he murmurs drowsily into her hair.

 

“ _Our_ cabin?” Her hand stops; his chin is jostled from atop her brow when she rolls up onto her elbow.

 

The months of peace have healed her cuts and bruises; her skin looks smooth and warm from where she stares down at him. Bellamy reaches up and tucks her wild blonde hair behind her ear. “Yes, ours.” Her blue eyes look like they shimmer in the dark, what with how she dances her gaze between his eyes, and her brows pull together over her nose. “Unless you don’t want to share…” Bellamy lets the words drift off on their own and hang suspended between them.

 

“No, I want to,” she breathes. “I want to share with you. I want to stay with you.”

 

She hasn’t said the words until now. Then again, neither has he. “Good.” His voice is a rumble; he doesn’t want to speak too loudly and break the quiet. “I want to stay with you, too.”

 

Her eyes are truly shimmering now, her smile small and tremulous. When she leans down to kiss him, he holds her close and says nothing of the salt on her lips.

 

But the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry, and Bellamy’s completion of their cabin, and thus the camp, is no different.

 

Almost simultaneous with the affixing of the last slab of corrugated metal on top of the cabin, Octavia and Lincoln nearly take bullets to the head when they break through the treeline outside of Olympus. (The kids had wanted to name it Camp Blake; Bellamy had scuffed the toe of his boot in the ground and recommended the name of the home of the entire pantheon of Greek gods, instead.) “We snuck out at night,” Octavia tells her brother when he takes her heavy pack and puts it on his own shoulder. “After Lexa’s council made its decision.”

 

Octavia’s derisive tone makes Bellamy pause in his steps. “What decision?”

 

On the other side of Octavia, Lincoln’s eyes scan the guard towers, counting men and guns. “Lexa’s breaking with the Sky People. It was the condition she had to fulfill to recreate the Grounder Alliance.”

 

The announcement sends the Ark Council reeling in shock and Clarke looks as though she’s Caesar on the ides of March when he tells her. Murphy only chuckles where he sits on the bed in medical, Clarke’s fingers frozen over his cracking scabs. “I told you, remember?” He lifts a capful of moonshine to his lips and tosses it back with a grimace. “They were never going to stay aligned with us. What those people do to their prisoners? Those people don’t give two shits about _peace_ with us.”

 

Clarke finishes wrapping Murphy’s arm and jerks her head at Bellamy when she’s done. She looks upset, but she also looks pissed, and he hasn’t seen her look this determined in months. “Get Raven and Wick to start jamming the radio frequencies for the walkie talkies. I’ll be damned if they start planning an attack on us with the tech _we_ gave them.”

 

Raven gives a feral grin when Bellamy relays her message. “I can do you one better,” she says, and sets a high-pitched squeal to echo through channels eight through ten at all hours of the day and night.

 

* * *

Having fled in the middle of the night, Octavia and Lincoln have only a low, thin tent to sleep under their first few days at Camp Jaha. Were it the slightest bit colder, Bellamy would have been beside himself at the thought of Octavia shivering out in the elements. Still, he isn’t overly fond of the idea of her all but sleeping in the dirt night after night.

 

He tells this to Clarke over breakfast. “They can share with us,” Clarke offers. “The cabin, I mean. It’d be tight but it would work.”

 

Even with her hair still looking a mess in the now-destroyed French braid she sleeps in, Clarke looks so earnest and understanding that Bellamy can’t help leaning forward over the corner of the table that separates them to catch her mouth in a kiss. Her tongue meets his eagerly and the urge to pull her into his lap rises strong and fast for so early in the morning. “I think Octavia and I are a bit too old now to be sharing a bedroom,” he rasps when he pulls back, chuckling when Clarke’s cheeks pinken at his insinuation.

 

He does let Octavia and Lincoln take their cabin, though. Amidst the rush to get the fence operational and a corridor established to a side gate of Camp Jaha and the other kids moved in and the garden tilled for planting and the furniture into the community hall and the five thousand other things that started happening all at once, Bellamy starts on a longer, narrower cabin for himself and Clarke, wedged between the clinic and the community hall. Still, the look on Octavia’s face when she runs her hand over the door’s casement and opens the window’s shutter to let the daylight in makes it all worth it.

 

The weekly meetings move to the community hall. There’s enough space there that the girls don’t have to sit on each others’ laps and people aren’t standing half-way through the tent flap of Bellamy and Clarke’s tent just to hear. “The fence is going to be live tomorrow,” he starts off, before they drink too much moonshine and start derailing the meeting by asking for time off to go swimming at the water hole near the dropship. “So unless you have a burning need to know what a million volts of electricity feels like, I’d recommend not leaning up against it anymore, alright?”

 

He hears Raven grumble that it’s not _really_ a million volts, but he pushes forward anyway, since she’s reminded him of something else. “And Monty is back in Mount Weather for another round of x-rays. If you all have any problems, Raven’s your girl.” Raven gives a jaunty salute when he jerks his thumb at her.

 

“Speaking of Mount Weather,” Clarke chimes in from the back of the room, surprising Bellamy and almost everyone else, “I have a huge favor to ask. We need volunteers for bone marrow donations. Mount Weather is a fortress; the grounders were never able to break into it until _we_ helped them. Without our technology, they won’t be able to again.”

 

The kids have all turned in their seats to listen to her. She’s got that little worry line between her eyebrows, but she’s confident and her voice never wavers.

 

“But we can’t just keep opening and closing the door like we have. The people remaining in Mount Weather are our friends—the ones who helped hide you, who stood up against the Wallaces and Dr. Tsing, and countless of other innocent young children who have nothing to do with what their government did. Medical has been doing marrow transfusions from the Camp Jaha population, but there aren’t enough young, healthy people to get the number of donations we need in such a short amount of time.”

 

Beside Clarke, Harper’s mouth has tightened and she drops her eyes to the ground. Bellamy knows that Harper went through hell in the Mountain, and that she doesn’t think too highly of the Mountain Men that remain. _They were all complicit_ , she’s argued in previous meetings, when they’d all debated whether to support a continued alliance between the Ark Council and the Mountain. _I don’t care if they didn’t take treatments. They knew what was happening, they knew what was going to happen to us, and they kept their mouths **shut** and did **nothing** until an army was at the gates._ Still, she lets Clarke talk without interruption.

 

“I’ll volunteer,” Jasper announces, surprising no one at all.

 

“What’s in it for us?” Murphy drawls. He’s got his feet crossed on the long table in the middle of the room; Bellamy kicks his chair leg to make him sit up straight.

 

Clarke arches a brow at Murphy’s impassive face. “Sick leave for two weeks after your donation, double rations for a month, and meat in your stew every other day.”

 

Murphy takes a swig of his moonshine and raises his cup towards Clarke with a smirk. “Count me in, then.”

 

Bellamy can’t hide the roll of his eyes at Murphy’s blatant opportunism, but Clarke’s speech did the trick—about twenty of the kids agree to give voluntary donations, but Clarke and Harper immediately nix about five of them for being too young or too underweight.

 

“Good thing we’re all but done with Olympus,” he says to Clarke that night while she changes into the cotton shorts she sleeps in. “You’ve incapacitated half of my workers.”

 

From across the tent, she tosses him an exasperated expression. “It’s _sick leave_ , Bell, and you’ll be singing a different tune when we can get in and out of the Mountain without it being a three-hour ordeal.”

 

He holds up the blankets for her and she slips between them, turning onto her side with a yawn. “I know, I know,” he murmurs against the warm skin of her neck. “I’m only teasing.”

 

Clarke chuckles and pulls his arm tighter around her ribs, wiggles back into his chest. They lie in companionable silence for a while, her thumb stroking over the knuckles of the hand resting between her breasts, him breathing in the sweet, clean smell of her hair and listening to the owls hooting off in the distance. “I think I’ll miss this place,” she finally mumbles, squeezing his hand.

 

“The tent?”

 

“Mmm.”

 

“Really?”

 

“Mmm.” He scoffs into the back of her neck and hears her sigh. “It saved me. You saved me when you took me in.”

 

“ _Clarke_ ,” Bellamy says, and turns his hand to tangle his fingers with hers while he sifts through the thoughts zipping through his brain. Finally he settles on: “Grief isn’t something you need to be saved from. It just needs to heal, and even that, people have to do on their own.”

 

His arm twinges a bit when she pulls their hands up to her mouth so she can kiss his fingers. “You and this place were like my stitches, then. Holding me together while I healed.”

 

* * *

It rains the day they move into their cabin. Fat raindrops ping on the metal roof, heard even through the ratty, worn blankets they’d woven through the rafters as insulation on Lincoln’s recommendation. Clarke’s grin is enough to brighten up the cabin, though, as she directs Bellamy and Miller on where to put the bed, table and chairs, and so on. Chancellor Griffin even stops by and awkwardly offers up a basket of candles and a set of four matching cups as a house-warming gift.

 

Bellamy ducks out after he’s made the right amount of small talk because Abby’s gaze falls meaningfully on Clarke and he thinks there’s some Mother-Daughter Talk that needs to happen out of his earshot. So he crosses the avenue to Octavia and Lincoln’s cabin, the one he and Clarke were supposed to have had. They’re straightening up from lunch; Lincoln pours out half of his mug of apple beer (another Green Family Experiment) for Bellamy and the three of them lean against the front of the cabin under the roof’s awning and bullshit for a little while to the sound of the raindrops. Lincoln rests his arm around Octavia’s shoulders and while Bellamy genuinely likes the man, he makes a mental note to double check with Clarke about the details on those birth control implants all the girls have.

 

Abby leaves with a friendly wave to the Blakes, pulling her hood up over her hair as she turns back down the avenue towards the Olympus-Jaha corridor. “Go on then,” Octavia urges with a teasing smile after he and Lincoln split and finish another small jar of apple beer. “Get on back to Clarke. I’m sure you both want to settle in together.”

 

Bellamy swats her shoulder and kisses her forehead, reminds her that she’s the _little_ sister, but follows her advice anyway and agrees to dinner the next night as he waves goodbye.

 

They haven’t set up many candles in the cabin yet, so his eyes have to adjust when he walks through the door and shakes the dampness from his hair. Clarke has a few set up on the table though, where she’s flipping through some loose pages. “Don’t tell me you’re doing work on moving day.”

 

She gives him a small smile. “No. Not work.” They’re her sketches. “I found the folder in my backpack a few minutes ago.”

 

Bellamy braces his hands on the back of her chair and presses a kiss to her crown. The faces of the dead look up at him from the table, all smiles and laughs. She’d sketched them happy, flush with life. Even Anya’s stern expression boasts a quirked eyebrow and a smirk. Finn’s got that devil-may-care grin in one sketch, winks over his shoulder in another. He remembers that she’d cried over not being able to get his smile right, all those months ago in her lonely tent she’d exiled herself to, but somewhere along the way she seems to have figured it out.

 

Clarke is quiet, her chin resting on her clasped hands. Bellamy doesn’t know what to say. He moves a hand to her shoulder instead and gives a comforting squeeze. She takes a deep breath, then, as if the touch of his hand had brought her back from somewhere far away. “I miss them.”

 

“Me, too.”

 

Clarke reaches out and begins gathering the sketches up. She taps their edges on the tabletop to stack them together neatly and then puts them back inside of the folder. They have a cabinet in the corner, a big metal thing with double doors on the front that Bellamy knows from his janitor days was used in storage closets. Clarke crosses to it and opens one of the doors. She has to go up onto her tip toes to get to the top shelf, where she slides the folder of the dead.

 

“You don’t want to keep it somewhere easier to get to?” he asks. “We can move that stuff on the third shelf—“

 

“No.” She closes the door and turns the handle to keep the latch in place. “I don’t need to keep them so close anymore.”

 

Clarke’s voice is low and quiet, but when she walks back to meet him in the middle of the room, he can see that her eyes are dry. She tangles their fingers together at their thighs and nudges his nose with hers before tilting her head and brushing her mouth against his. At her second pass, Bellamy leans into it, tightening his grip on her hands to keep her balanced as he follows her mouth.

 

The rain patters against the roof, drowning out the little sigh she gives when he raises her hands to his neck, but he can still feel the rise and fall of her chest when his wraps his arms under hers and cups the back of her head. The roll of the thunder above them covers up the whisper of their clothes sliding over their skin and crumpling onto the floor; a crack of lightning strikes in tandem to the moan Clarke lets out when he hoists her up his body to carry her the length of the cabin to their bed.

 

For the first time in a long time, Bellamy feels like they’re truly alone. When he laps at her breast and her stomach and between her thighs, he doesn’t have to press his hand over her mouth, lest Monty and Miller in the next tent over hear her. When she rises over him and brushes her hair back, he doesn’t worry about people seeing the shadow of her naked form against the tent wall. It’s just the two of them between these four walls, linking fingers while her hips roll against his and his mouth trails fire down her neck.

 

She comes with a keening cry, eyebrows pinched and back arching and mouth dropping open as a blush blooms across her cheeks and chest. _I love you, I love you, I love you_ , the rain says over and over, but in case Clarke can’t hear it, too, Bellamy flips her onto her back repeats it to her in gasps against her temple. She draws her knees high around his ribs and clutches his back, draws him down into the softness of her center and her breasts and her mouth until the pressure behind his navel swirls too tight and it all explodes and even when his eyes roll back all he sees is _Clarke_.

 

The rain brings him back a moment later, and Clarke’s fingers tracing the lines of his shoulders. She rolls with him when he shifts to the side and giggles when he passes his hand over his face. “Well, now we’ve christened the cabin.”

 

“Best christening _I’ve_ ever been to.”

 

She laughs again and leans up on an elbow to kiss his cheek. Bellamy grunts and puts a hand behind his head so he can better look up into her bright blue eyes. She takes a breath in, starts to say something, and then stops herself and tucks her lip between her teeth. Bellamy drifts a hand down her back and up again, keeps his eyes on hers when she runs her pointer finger down his nose and drops it into the dimple in his chin. “I love you, too,” she finally murmurs.

 

Their roof still sings with the fall of the rain as Bellamy presses his hand between her shoulder blades and draws her down to him.

 

* * *

 

“You’re so pathetic,” Clarke teases, giving the lump of blankets a little shake. Underneath them, Bellamy moans. “All winter and spring you were as healthy as an ox and _now_ , in the _summertime_ , you get sick.”

 

He sneezes, then coughs. It’s phlegmy and croaky. Clarke pulls his blankets back and presses her ear to his chest. He still sounds crackly, and his hand doesn’t come up to stroke her hair like it does when he wants to cuddle. So she nudges his shoulder. “Go ahead and roll over onto your stomach, Bell. You don’t want all that crud to settle in the back of your lungs.”

 

Dutifully, he follows her instructions. She shoves a pillow under his head and he wraps his arms around it, buries his head into it with a sniffle. “Thanks.” He’s _so_ congested; Clarke bites her lip to stifle a laugh at his pitifully nasally mumble.

 

“I’ll bring you some tea later, alright?” Clarke sits down on the edge of the bed and rubs his back, hot and sweaty from his fever.

 

He snuffs again. Clarke passes him his handkerchief and he blows his nose. “The council meeting is today.” He presses the heels of his hands to his eyes and rubs. Clarke swats his wrist, tells him that he’s going to give himself wrinkles. “I gotta go.”

 

“You’re not going _anywhere_ , not like this. If you don’t make someone else sick, you’ll pass out from exhaustion.”

 

“They’re gonna decide whether to tell the grounders about the nuke,” he says, but he has to repeat himself twice before Clarke understand what he’s saying.

 

She frowns and rubs his back again. It _is_ a pretty serious meeting, and the nuke had been a pretty hot topic during the meetings in the community hall over the past few weeks. Someone should be there, but Bellamy?

 

Clarke glances down at him again. He’s a flushed, sweaty, mucus-y mess next to her. _Not_ Bellamy, that’s for sure.

 

Then who?

 

She sets her jaw and gives a decisive nod. “Fine, then. I’ll go.”

 

“What?” (Though it came out much more like “wha?”)

 

Clarke smiles and brushes his hair out of his glassy eyes. “I’ll go to the council meeting. It’s after lunch, right?” He nods. “Alright, then. I’ll take a long lunch and push back my afternoon shift at medical.”

 

Bellamy frowns. The weight of his eyelids becomes to much for him finally, and he lets them close. “Are you sure? I thought you didn’t want to do that anymore,” he slurs.

 

“I’ll be fine. And someone should be there to represent us.” Bellamy sighs. Clarke presses her thumb along the rise of his cheekbone, trying to give him some relief from his sinus congestion. “I’ve been to all the meetings. I know what everyone thinks.”

 

Bellamy snuffs again, but nods in defeat.

 

Clarke leans down and kisses his forehead. “I’ll be back after the meeting with your tea and tell you how it went. Now, get some sleep.”

 

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That’s all, folks! Thanks for an incredible ride!

**Author's Note:**

> I'm also on [tumblr](http://labonsoirfemme.tumblr.com/)! Drop by and say hello. :)
> 
> I'd love to hear what you all think so far!


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